To Build a Queendom
by phoenixyfriend
Summary: Leah has forever been a creature of story. All gods are. When Loki dreamed up another Leah, one that shouldn't and didn't and couldn't exist, she was brought into a story. And that held weight. It gave her memories, history, enough of a hint of reality that she did not fully fade. And so she waits in the space for things that are not meant to exist, for another story to find her.
1. Prologue: Limbo

**A/N: This story is going to have some very short chapters, and some rather long ones. They will vary greatly, though the beginning especially will be heavy on the short chapters.**

 **Due to the fact that the main character is a death goddess, a lot of people die. Various kinds of deaths are discussed, and she's rather callous to the majority of them.**

 **No knowledge of Marvel is required to understand this story.**

o.o.o.o.o

She's floating in limbo.

Not Limbo. Limbo with a capital L is a rather specific place. Limbo as a word is just a way of saying she doesn't know where she is, just that it is a sort of in-between place that shouldn't rightly exist.

It makes sense. She's not supposed to exist either.

Leah the Child was built from Hela's hand, flesh and bone made larger and given a life of her own.

Leah the Story was built from ink and shadows, words made reality by Loki's careful hand.

Leah the Illusion was built from guilt and magic, a hallucination given proper form by a murderer.

She was Leah the Illusion, the Leah that not only _shouldn't_ exist, but in the end, outright _didn't_. She was a caricature of a person, impressions and half-baked assumptions, but she was…

She was.

She had, however briefly, been a person.

And now, she is in limbo.

The others don't exist here. The false Patriot, perhaps, survived. The Mother Parasite, she doubts. The other girls and Ultimate Nullifier ceased to exist entirely.

They are not in limbo.

But Leah has forever been a creature of story. All gods are. So when Loki dreamed up another Leah, one that shouldn't and didn't and couldn't exist, she was brought into a story. And that held weight. It gave her memories, gave her history, gave her enough of a hint of reality that she did not fully fade.

And so she waits in the in-between space for things that are not meant to exist, waits for another story to find her.

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_** Gods are interesting creatures to talk to. Leah's glad to be one of them, because this conversation would be much more difficult if she wasn't.


	2. A Meeting of Gods

**A/N: Warnings for mentions of: suicide, execution, massacre, murder, assassination, death in childbirth, and just various forms of death in general. Since these are death gods talking about them, the deaths are treated rather callously, and human souls are altogether treated more like property than people because, again, death gods.**

 **If you were worried about OCs, this is as much as I'm introducing for gods for the entire story. There are two gods and the embodiment of a concept introduced in this chapter, and that's going to be all for the whole story.**

o.o.o.o.o

She doesn't know how long she waits before someone finds her, and gives her purpose. The person who finds her is not altogether unexpected, though certainly not the top of her list.

(Loki has a way of finding her. She has learned to expect him around every corner.)

"Lady Death."

"Leah of Hel." The speaker is a skeleton clad in black robes. But Death, Leah knows, has a tendency to appear as what you expect it to. Wherever she is now, she doubts Death has changed that much. "I've a job for you."

Leah inclines her head. "What do you ask of me?"

Death is not a creature that one should anger. There are few Leah respects enough to tread lightly around. She has the memories of Leah the Child and Leah the Story. She respected Hela enough for this, once. Odin, too, though less.

Death is greater than either of them.

"I have a world to curate. There are two death gods working it already, but the coming years are going to push them to the breaking point. I need to introduce another one, and if I happen to find you instead of having to go and wait for one to naturally form… well, that just makes things easier for me." Death laughs. "Besides, we need a few more women running things there."

A single world. So little? "I would have a queendom of my own? Or would I work under another?"

"You would have your own lands, to run as you see fit, but I'd prefer if you could play nice with Jashin and Shinigami. They've been working for me for a very long time, you see." Death clicks a non-existent tongue. "I don't want to see you lot arguing over who gets which souls, after all. No petty squabbles, you hear?"

Leah thinks.

She can work with that.

"I would be honored to work for you, Lady Death." She inclines her head again, deeper this time.

Death laughs, a cackling noise. "I knew you'd see sense! Now, let's get you introduced to the boys."

o.o.o.o.o

Death leaves after introducing them by name, leaving them to figure things out on their own. They're all seated around a low table, drinking tea, and Leah knows that this world, whatever it is otherwise, is very similar to the Far East on Midgard. Which country specifically, she's not sure, but she'd guess Japan.

Jashin is a pale man, in every sense of the word. His skin is near-white, papery and delicate-looking. His hair is silver, tied low on his back. His eyes are a pastel shade of mauve, heavily hooded and rarely meeting her eyes.

It only makes the dark, bloody red and shimmering gold of his kimono all the more striking.

Shinigami is a man of greys. He is old, wrinkled, and his hair and eyes and clothing are all the same shade of slate grey. Even his skin has a grey tinge, and everything about him wavers like the wisps of smoke and vapors that come off him.

"So." Leah says, and sets her cup down with a soft clink. "I suppose I should ask how you've run things thus far."

"I have ruled the dead realms these past thousand years." Jashin says, one finger tracing the whorls in the table. His voice is soft. "I collect and punish. Shinigami…"

"I purify them, cleanse them of memories and past sins, and return them to the cycle of reincarnation." Shinigami says. His voice is like a dropping tombstone. "You are free to keep a handful to yourself for the long-term, should you find them useful as assistants or some such, but the majority must eventually be returned."

Leah purses her lips. Unfortunate, that. The humans are quick to die, and Leah has a feeling that there aren't many immortals with low birth rates that she can build armies out of, as Hela did. "I see. I suppose that means I should speak with you, Lord Jashin, as to which souls you would like to keep, and which I should have rights to."

She had a similar pact with Valhalla, once upon a time.

"I am only truly attached to the souls sacrificed to me by my followers, and the followers themselves." Jashin swirls the tea in his cup. "The rest is… negotiable."

"I only lay claim to those that sell me their souls in exchange for a sealing." Shinigami says.

"Followers?" She finds that more amusing than she should. It's been a long time since she's had someone believe in her with blind faith and not proof. "I see."

"Are there any souls that you would lay claim to?"

Leah thinks about it. She doubts she can horde as large a claim as she used to, but there are at least a few that she does not care for. Those who, back in the Nine Realms, would have gone to Valhalla. "None who die in childbirth. None who die honorable deaths in battle."

"And those who die dishonorably?" Shinigami asks.

"My favorites." She smiles at him. It's not a nice smile.

"I do not mind continuing to take those dead of childbirth and honorable battle." Jashin says. "Their deaths are often the most painful, which is my main point of contention. Are there others you have interest in?"

Of the humans? "Suicide. And self-sacrifice." That's not quite enough, perhaps. These are not ignoble deaths, but they are hers. Still so small a portion of the world, however. "Execution." Ignoble deaths of victims, punishment of the wicked. "Massacre and murder. Assassination."

She doesn't know much of this world, but for some reason, she feels that the five criteria she has outlined likely gives her a larger portion of the population than her last world would have. She's left him quite a few, deaths of old age and illness and simple, common accidents, but she's got a good-sized percentage already.

"What of souls with deaths that may qualify for both your criteria or mine?" Jashin asks. "A suicide attack in the middle of battle, perhaps."

Leah considers it. "First-come first-serve? Or I suppose we could discuss them on a case by case basis, depending on how frequently they happen."

Jashin nods, and another topic seems to come to mind for him. "Lady Leah, we are allowed and, often, even encouraged to roam the lands of the living and see how their world develops."

Leah can't imagine why, but she assumes that it will, at least, be a way to entertain herself after the early days of building her queendom are over. There are fewer gods in this world, fewer petty squabbles and grand wars over territory and ideology.

She hopes they have milkshakes.

"You will almost certainly find someone or somewhere to get attached to. It's not inevitable, of course, but when it happens, there are certain allowances to be made." Jashin looks her in the eyes at last.

"How so?" Leah runs the tip of her ringer around the rim of her empty cup, deceptively calm.

"In disputed cases, I claim first rights to any souls from the Land of Hot Waters. I'm rather partial to several other territories, but that can be worked out as we go along." Jashin's hands are hidden in those long, voluminous sleeves. Leah knows enough of his kind (knows enough of gods and men) to know that they are long for the sake of hidden weaponry, not just style. "And occasionally, should you become attached enough to a specific souls, you may lay claim to it ahead of time."

Leah knows how to do that back home. She knows here, too, how to lay her hand on the back of someone's neck and tether their soul to her lands. It does not hasten their death, but it does ensure they come to her when the time is right.

Leah feels certain that there will be fewer true arguments in this world. The population is smaller, yes, but so is the number of deities.

She feels death clinging to the fabric of this world, as an inevitable fact the way it is on Midgard. There are few who try to fight for eternal life. There are fewer still who would wage war on Helheim.

Leah is a very early goddess for this world. Not the earliest, but she will be ancient when the pantheons begin to fill. She will be a fact of the world, a shadow that haunts little godlings in stories, a distant, proud figure of unknown power that demands respect.

She will be a Hel Queen.

Leah smiles at Jashin. "I understand."

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_** There are many levels to Hel. Someone has to build them.


	3. The Realm of Trials

**A/N: Mentions of suicide and homophobia.**

 **(I'll start introducing canon Naruto characters next chapter, in case you were getting impatient.)**

o.o.o.o.o

Leah's lands, such as they are, are barren and dry. She feels the power tingle in her hands, the power to make things grow and warp and build. She can change these lands. Her power is absolute.

She is Queen.

She is also getting ahead of herself.

Souls have already begun pouring in. Victims of bandit attacks, shinobi that tried to flee from battle but were slaughtered as they ran, people who found their lives too difficult to continue and ended themselves.

Leah needs some place to keep them, so she forms a holding space to cage them for the time being, senseless until she has somewhere to put them.

She builds a paradise for the righteous.

She builds a punishment for the wicked.

She builds… something for the rest. It's an odd place. It works. That's enough.

She weaves the enchantments to judge souls as they arrive, to send them to the level of Hel they deserve to go to. The enchantments are complex, and differ from the world she came from. The values systems here are different, and so is she. She needs to weigh why people have done things, how many they have hurt, how many saved, how much they were punished in life for the sins they committed.

(How much they believe they deserved punishment is not taken into account. At least one youth has come through with his life ended by people's hatred of those who lie with their own kind. He has helped enough people in his life, has been righteous enough, that she sends him to paradise as soon as she has finished it. To say he is surprised is an understatement.)

She builds her queendom, and is satisfied. Her population is low, but it will grow. She can micromanage for now.

The Third Great Shinobi War begins.

(It also ends.)

(Leah's queendom has grown quite a bit by the end. She'll need to start choosing subordinates soon.)

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ Leah wasn't expecting to find someone being strangled in Fate's strings like this.

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: Some of my description of Hel was inspired by Sera's description of 616's Hel in "Angela: Queen of Hel" #1.**


	4. Fate's Hands are Busy

There is an arrival that catches Leah's interest. The girl is not the first to carry the taint of a demon, but she is the first to arrive that is so very strangled by Fate's strings. This girl is the cause of something that is going to affect the world for a very long time, and Leah doubts the girl even realizes it.

(Fate is strange, in this world. There is no grand prophecy of who shall be savior and who shall cause ruination. Fate is impact. Fate is strings of influence that change and waver as the world does. A single person may be tangled in Fate's strings, may have that prophecy, but the strings do not dictate whether they will be good or bad or something in between, only that they will be great.)

(And people can challenge Fate. They can weave their own strings, when they try hard enough.)

(Leah likes this Fate.)

"And who are you?" She asks softly, urging the world to shift so that they are in the throne room. It's an impressive room. It's an impressive throne.

"Nohara Rin." The girl says, standing straight-backed and unflinching. She is terrified, but she does not show it. Leah is impressed. The girl recognizes what sort of power she stands before.

"Tell me about yourself. How you died, how you lived, and so on." Tell me what makes you so special.

Rin tells Leah quite a lot about herself. She tells Leah about a place called Konohagakure, about people called Minato and Obito and Kakashi, about a turtle demon and Kirigakure's plan to devastate a city.

She asks about Obito. Leah checks the records (he might have been hers; he might have been Jashin's), but he seems to not be here. Rin doesn't ask about anyone else.

Leah doesn't know why Rin is so special yet. Why Fate's hand rests so heavily on her shoulder. Leah knows she's interested now, though.

"Rin, how would you like a job?"

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ Dead women aren't supposed to tell any tales, but they sure can try to protect their sons.

Introducing Uzumaki Kushina as "That woman that met the Queen of Hel and basically went FIGHT ME."


	5. A Bloody Habanero

**A/N: I swear I'll let Leah lay off the Fate schtick next chapter, I promise.**

o.o.o.o.o

Leah trains Rin to manage Hel. The girl finds the work distasteful (especially when she is set to the task of punishing her countrymen), but she does the job she's been given, and does it well. The enchantments take care of most things, but having Rin helps more than Leah expected.

(The girl is not a handmaiden, but the joke flits through Leah's head nonetheless. She has the memories of Leah the Child. Loki gave her that.)

Rin has worked for Leah for a year when Konoha's death toll just suddenly peaks. It is not the slow peak of illness or war. It is the peak of a natural disaster.

Konoha is dying.

And somehow, Leah thinks, it's all hers. So many of them, hers.

Leah looks at Rin's ashen face, and smiles. "There is work to be done, my dear. Shall we?"

Rin gulps and nods. She is the first lieutenant of the Queen of Hel. She knows her job.

Leah opens a portal to Konoha and steps through. She needs to see. Needs to know. Needs to be there.

"Take care of things while I'm gone, will you? I'd like to see what's causing all this. I trust you. You can do this."

She steps through before Rin can say anything, and finds a city in shambles. There is screaming, crying, fire everywhere. There is also a giant fox with nine tails.

Leah is fairly certain she's found the reason for her sudden bounty.

She sees a bench nearby. She's landed in a children's park and there are quite a few places to sit scattered about, so she finds the one that gives her the best view of the rampaging demon and takes a seat.

She hides the smile on her face and placidly watches the creature destroy things.

She watches people die.

She ignores the shinobi that attempt to escort her to safety.

She bats away a boulder that threatens to crush her while they attempt to escort her to safety.

After that, they no longer attempt to escort her to safety.

Leah watches the Kyuubi destroy Konoha with a vague sort of interest, and a distant sort of amusement that Rin had died to stop the Sanbi from destroying this city, only for the same thing to happen just a year and a half later. It may even be worse, if the tails are any signifier of power. They might be.

The blond man fighting the beast summons Shinigami and sells his soul to seal the demon. She can't have that one. She can't have many of the dead shinobi, either. They died honorably in battle, futile as it was. She could try to argue them for herself, but there isn't enough weight to her words.

The redheaded woman with the demonic taint, however…

"Self-sacrifice," Leah says as she comes upon the woman, just seconds before one of Jashin's reapers arrives. The air of self-sacrifice is stronger with her than with any of the other dead; the scene of her death and the cause of it play over and over in front of Leah's eyes. "Not childbirth. She threw herself in the way of the demon's claw to save her son."

"Honorable death in battle." The reaper rasps, but it bows out after a few seconds of staring. "You were the first to arrive."

"Indeed." Leah turns to the woman and reaches for her shoulder with a smile. The woman backs away, looking nervous and suspicious.

Right. Ninja.

"Why were you talking about how I died?" The woman asks, glaring at Leah.

"We were deciding to whom your soul belonged." Leah explains, tilting her head. "Self-sacrifice falls under my jurisdiction."

"But, my son—" The woman turns back to her body, and then towards the blond man that Shinigami devoured. Leah stays back and quiet until the woman's eyes land on the small blond child that has not yet been discovered. "Naruto!"

Leah follows behind, more interested in seeing what happens than in getting back to her queendom immediately. Fate is wrapped tightly around this woman. It's different from the stranglehold on Rin (if Rin is a wrecking ball for Fate, then this woman is a strong foundation for some larger building), and weaker, but it's definitely there.

Leah nearly stops breathing when she sees the small blonde boy with whisker marks. She thinks she might know why Fate has an interest in this woman, now. There is something special about the infant.

Fate rests more heavily on his shoulders than anyone else she's met. Leah can almost taste the obsession.

"Oh, now this is an interesting one…" She mutters, drifting closer as the woman tries with futility to touch what Leah assumes is her child.

The child is not a wrecking ball. He is not a foundation. He is…

Well, if she's going to keep using this metaphor, then he's the entire construction company.

"You can't have him." The woman says with as much ferocity as she can manage, which is quite a lot, considering she's a dead woman trying to stand against a god.

"I don't want him." Yet. "He's not dead." Yet. "Children are returned to the cycle of reincarnation immediately, so there is no place for him in Hel."Yet. "He is not old enough for me to claim him for the future." Yet.

Leah looks at the woman, weighs her options, and then sighs and leans down to pick up the child. The woman looks terrified. "Whom do you trust?"

The woman blinks. "Er… what?"

"This child will be important some day. I have reason to see him grow to adulthood. Whom do you trust that is not yet dead?" Leah hasn't held a newborn before. It's strange. There is so much life in her arms.

"The Sandaime Hokage." The woman finally says. "Or Mikoto-chan. Or Kakashi-kun."

Leah doesn't know who these people are. She doesn't really care. "Lead the way, then."

The woman does so, and Leah sees her shudder every time she passes through something instead of bumping into it. Leah has long since wrapped herself in an invisibility spell, and weaves around the people that the dead woman just soldiers through.

It's amusing.

They find 'Mikoto-chan' first. She looks pale and drawn, and is ordering about a contingent of soldiers that look like they might be related to her. There are others nearby that look like they aren't related, but they don't interact with her nearly as much. Fate wisps about her, but less than the dead woman. It's still more than most people.

Leah drops the spell and steps forward, holding the infant close to her for the moment. "Are you Mikoto?"

The woman and all the people around her are on guard and nervous, alternately staring at her and the little bundle in her arms.

"…yes, why do you ask?"

"Here." Leah holds the child out. "I was informed that you were to be trusted with the care of this child for the time being."

Mikoto edges forward cautiously, darting the last few steps to take the boy. The dead woman at Leah's shoulder makes a wounded noise, but doesn't move.

"Who are you?" Mikoto asks, her eyes demanding.

"Leah." She says, and tilts her head to the side quizzically. "Do take care of that child. I'm rather interested in seeing what becomes of him."

"Naruto," The dead woman says, "His name is Naruto."

Leah turns to look over her shoulder with a raised brow, and then turns back to Mikoto. "I've been told his name is Naruto."

What an odd name.

Mikoto's eyes narrow. "Where did you find him?"

"Near the dead blonde man in the flaming robes." Leah sees no point in lying. Well, she is, technically, because the dead woman was the one to find him, but that's irrelevant.

"The Hokage…" Mikoto whispers, and what little blood is left in her face drains out.

Leah's starting to get bored. "I'll take my leave, then."

"Wait!" The cry comes from both the dead woman and Mikoto.

"Who are you, really?" Mikoto demands. Just a name was clearly not enough for her. Smart woman.

"Tell her to get him to the Sandaime," the dead woman pleads.

Leah feels her features smooth out into a blank expression that signals her annoyance to anyone that knows her. "Who I am is none of your concern. Take that child to the Sandaime. Farewell."

Leah tears a portal in the air beside her, wreathed in green flames, and steps through to her throne room. She ignores the gasps behind her and pulls the dead woman along.

Rin is waiting for her, keeping an eye on the enchantments and the mindless creations set to the task of punishing those in the deepest levels. She's got a clipboard on hand, a humorously anachronistic object that Rin insists makes her work easier.

"Rin-chan?" The dead woman gasps, and her voice is a mixture of shock and relief and possibly disappointment. Rin looks up sharply

"Kushina-san?" She's surprised. Definitely not happy about the fact that this woman is dead. "You… what happened?"

"You mean you don't know?" Kushina (apparently) asks, her dismay very apparent.

"I don't… no, of course not, I've been busy managing the sudden influx of dead from Konoha. I haven't actually stopped to ask what was happening. I had to wait for Lady Leah to come back." Rin's eyes flicker over to Leah, who's standing back with her arms crossed, watching this all unfold.

Kushina stiffens a bit and turns back to the woman that brought her to what is clearly some realm for the dead.

"Yes, that would be me. I assume you two knew each other in life?"

"She was my teacher's fiancée." Rin says, mechanical pencil nervously tapping against her clipboard. "I… didn't expect to see her this soon."

"And why is that?"

"Healing factor." Rin says promptly. "Um, may I speak with her before you send her on?"

Leah watches the shock on Kushina's face grow with something akin to amusement. She obviously wasn't expecting the deference that Rin is showing. Perhaps she hasn't realized where she is yet. "Actually, she's managed to intrigue me. I was thinking of offering her a job. Talk, and then see what you can do to convince me she's worth it."

Something sharpens in Rin's eyes and she nods decisively, grabbing Kushina's arm and dragging her to the edge of the room to speak in hushed whispers. Leah takes a seat on her throne and takes a look to see what's happened in her pretty little kingdom in the time she's been gone.

She doesn't bother listening in on the conversation between two dead Konoha kunoichi.

She already knows she'll have a new subordinate by the end of the day.

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_** Kushina is going to be ninja Steve Irwin.


	6. Demon Wrangler

Kushina is quickly given the position of head demon wrangler. There aren't any other demon wranglers yet, but Kushina's chakra chains make her indisputably suited to the role. Given how the collective despair of the lowest levels of Hel have started to coalesce into demonic entities, having someone around to control them is necessary.

Kushina's natural distaste for demonic entities quickly gives way before the earliest of Hel's new denizens.

"Oh, aren't you a cutie? Yes you are, yes you are!"

Brand new demonic entities tend to look as young as they actually are, which means that most of the demons in Hel right now look, at best, like month-old puppies, kittens, and so on. They are a fair bit larger than normal, to reflect their future monstrous size, but at the moment, they are still small enough that Kushina has absolutely no trouble with them whatsoever.

"Having fun?" Leah asks, taking a seat on a protrusion in the rock that makes up the walls of the cavern. Rin hovers behind her, clipboard at hand.

(Leah has removed the natural restrictions on her age. Rin's getting older, however slowly. She'll reach adulthood eventually.)

Kushina shoots Leah a dirty look, but stands and dusts herself off. "Yes, I am."

"More than you thought?"

"Yes, you told me so, I was wrong, and so on." Kushina rolls her eyes and leans down to pick up one of the demonic fox kits. "Are you just here to check up on my work or what?"

As deferent as Rin is, Kushina doesn't display any respect whatsoever. Eventually, this may be a problem, should Leah's armies reach the size she desires, but for now, it's amusing enough that she leaves the woman be.

"I'm thinking of visiting the world of the living soon." Leah tells her, which garners a reaction. Kushina's head snaps up from the fox kit and focuses on Leah.

"I thought you only did that for the Kyuubi thing because of how many people were dying." She says cautiously.

"I'm free to visit whenever I so choose; the event you are referencing was simply the first time I was interested enough to leave my duties. As it stands, the visit piqued my curiosity, and now I'd like to see some more of that world." Leah smiles. "So I've come to the two of you for suggestions."

Kushina looks to Rin, who shrugs. Leah doesn't bother trying to read the silent conversation, just waits.

(She is a Hel Queen. She has all the time in the world.)

"You'd probably be interested in the major villages," Kushina finally says. "Konoha, Suna, Kiri, Iwa, and Kumo are the five main shinobi villages, and whatever it is you're trying to find is probably in one of them."

What she's trying to find is almost certainly centered at least partially in Konoha, Leah thinks, but she doesn't say that. "Anything more specific?"

"Depends on what you want." Kushina sits back down on the ground, and the baby demons swarm her. "Restaurants, clubs, tourist attractions… I know where they are, and which ones are the best, but I'm not entirely certain which ones would interest you."

Leah tilts her head. "Milkshakes."

Kushina blinks at her. "Milkshakes?"

"It's been several years since I could have a good milkshake. I'm rather fond of them." The previous two Leahs had been the same way. "I don't think this world has anything similar to the diners I'm used to, so I'm not sure where to start the hunt."

"Michiro's café probably still carries them." Rin muses. "Maybe Haruhi's 24-hour Breakfast Corner?"

Kushina nods. "Yeah, either of those would do. Both are in Konoha, by the way, so they might have been destroyed by the Kyuubi, but you might get lucky. I'm not sure how much that means to you, but it's the area we know best."

"Not a problem." She'd spent quite a lot of time in Oklahoma, once, despite Asgardia and Hel being her nominal home realms. The previous Leah had, anyway. Konoha was more than large enough to sate her interests for the time being. "The attractions you mentioned?"

"Hokage mountain, but that's not publicly accessible." Kushina says immediately. "Fire Temple's usually good, though since you're a god yourself I'm not sure how much that'll interest you. The castle at Otafuku Gai, maybe?"

"I'll write up a list." Rin promises, her pen already skittering across the paper. "Anything else?"

"Dancing." There's something Leah finds she wants to do, despite her previous incarnations never finding any interest in it. "Swing dancing, specifically."

Kushina and Rin stare at each other blankly for a second before simultaneously saying, "Kumo. Definitely Kumo."

One of Leah's eyebrows inches its way upwards. "Oh?"

"Kumo's a bit more…" Rin struggles to find words, "You've told me about the closest parallel to our world in where you come from, that Midgard place. And the country most similar, in many ways, to that America place you stayed in is Kumo. And Konoha might have some place for what you're looking for, but you'll find more of that sort of thing if you go out to Kaminari no Kuni."

"I see." Leah wonders if she'll actually be able to find a nice swing club, but it's not really her main goal. "Milkshakes first. Rin, you're in charge until I get back."

"Yes, ma'am." Rin sighs, gives a shallow bow, and turns to head back towards the throne room, where her cluttered desk and all the equipment to track the state of Hel were.

Leah wondered if she should teach Rin how to form her own portals.

It could wait.

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ Rin is perfectly content with her job, thank you very much.


	7. Assistant Director of Hel

Rin doesn't hate her job.

She doesn't particularly love it, but it's not bad. It doesn't have a massive number of benefits, but it gives her something to do and allows her more leeway than most residents of Hel. She doesn't have to worry about the punishment that the wicked undergo, or the crushing boredom of the grey realms. Paradise would have been nice, but she's not sure if she could have made it there, considering… well. Ninja.

There's a lot of paperwork, though. Rin's job is mostly paperwork, honestly. Sometimes she makes tea or checks up on enchantments, or tours through the Hel layers to make sure everything is running smoothly. Most of her time, however, is tied up in all the paperwork.

Hel is a bureaucracy, and Rin is pretty sure this is only true because Leah found it amusing, because not a single one of her stories of her old Hel involved paperwork beyond a single land deed.

(It could be worse, she tells herself. She could have been forced into overseeing the torture.)

Most of that time is spent on records. Who died, when, why they were sent to the section of Hel they went to, and so on. Rin has to read through and stamp every last one to signify that there weren't any errors made by the enchantments, and then file them away. She's had to do this for her own death. She's had to do it for more than a few dead comrades, whom she'd tried to visit in the time since (Biwako had been… surprised, to say the least). She's had to do it for more than a few old enemies, too, though that was a bit more viciously satisfying.

At least she got a shiny new uniform out the deal! And a clipboard! And Kushina is here now. That has to mean something, right?

Kami, this job is weird.

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_** Honestly, milkshakes doesn't even seem like a word anymore.

On the other hand, Leah's gotten some good conversation out of someone who doesn't know who she is for the first time in years, so that's nice.


	8. Milkshakes

Konoha is in shambles.

Leah doesn't bother trying to see how badly everything has been affected. That isn't her job, or her interest. It's been long enough that the village has somewhat recovered, but not long enough for everything to run smoothly again. She doesn't think there's going to be any dancing for her tonight.

But she might be able to find a milkshake.

"Excuse me," She flags down a young shinobi that passes her by, smiling. "Could you perhaps direct me towards Michiko's Café?"

"Yosh!" The teenager says, pumping a fist. He looks exhausted, but he's still exuding an absurd amount of energy. "I shall lead you there!"

"That's very kind of you." Leah doesn't know who this child is. She doesn't quite care, either, beyond finding him slightly irritating already.

"I am Maito Gai," The boy tells her as they walk along. "What is your name, most beautiful flower?"

Alright, so he's maybe a little charming. "I am Leah of Hel."

The word means nothing to them, of course. Hel is a proper name, and the Allspeak does not translate it to anything. For all the boy knows, it's simply an oddly named village that is too small for him to have heard of before.

"That is not a common name, Leah-san." The boy tells her, as though importing some great secret. "Are you from very far away?"

"You could say that." In more ways than one, really. She doesn't offer any more information, though partway through the town, she does pause.

"Leah-san?"

"Is there anywhere I might exchange gold for money?" She asks. She'd rather not use magic to get what she wants in places she intends to return to. She does, however, have quite a lot of gold and other tradeable goods. The land that Hel is built on is rich with resources, gold among them. It's not quite as much as she would have had in the Hel of her home, but she hasn't had thousands of years to build up her wealth here.

(There are a handful of countries here that bury their dead with coins in the mouth as the Greeks had. She collects those, but the practice is a rare thing.)

(She supposes she could go about directly collecting souls and looting their corpses. It did sound rather fun.)

"Ano…" Gai rolls his eyes heavenwards and puts a finger to his chin. "There is a jewelry store in a few blocks that might buy it?"

"That will do. I have none of the local currency, but gold tends to keep its value from one country to the next." Not every country, of course, but it is a decent standard on the whole.

"Yosh! Follow me!"

Exchanging the gold she's brought is enough for a sizable wad of bills (Ryo, apparently), and she lets Gai cheerily lead her away to the small café where she can finally get a milkshake again.

It tastes very, very good.

(Gai leaves, because he does have his duties. He promises to help her should she need him again, though he offers no way to contact him.)

(It's a nice thought, anyway.)

It takes maybe fifteen minutes after she's sat down for Mikoto to find her. She isn't sure if she should be impressed or not. On the one hand, she doesn't have a massively terrifying reputation and they don't have mobile phones, so of course they wouldn't react to her as quickly as the people of Midgard.

On the other hand, they are supposed to be ninjas.

"Leah-san." The woman says. There are deep circles under her eyes.

"Mikoto, right?" Leah tilts her head, and swirls the contents of her half-empty glass with her straw. "Take a seat."

She does, if stiffly. "The Hokage is interested in you, now. We've no records of anyone fitting your profile."

"I'm not surprised." Leah takes a sip of her milkshake and doesn't continue.

"You aren't going to elaborate?" Mikoto doesn't seem surprised.

"Ask your questions. I'll answer if I feel like it." Playing about with the humans might be interesting for a while.

Mikoto leans forward to prop herself up on the table. "What were you doing the night of the Kyuubi attack?"

"Watching."

"Why?"

"There were rather a lot of people dying. I was intrigued."

"Some chuunin tried to get you away from the destruction, but you refused. Why?"

"I wanted to keep watching."

"You weren't afraid of being hurt?"

"Not at all."

"Why?"

Leah smiles and goes back to her milkshake without answering.

Mikoto leans back in her seat, arms crossed. After about thirty seconds of Leah's amused smile and her own frustration, Mikoto flags down a waiter and orders her own milkshake.

Leah's smile brightens. Good, time to have more milkshakes. Well, no, one is enough for her for now, but she is a god and they do tend to eat a lot. Also, if Mikoto buys a milkshake, then that means more revenue for the stand, which makes it likelier to stay open for the long-term, which means a dependable source of milkshakes in the future.

"You're dangerous." Mikoto observes.

"You could say that." Leah shrugs. She does have a lot of power, but she's not doing anything she shouldn't be with it.

"Do you have any plans that might damage Konoha?"

"No." Nothing she plans should affect the living.

"Might you damage it without planning to?" Oh, she is good. Very thorough.

"There's always a chance. That chance is very low for anything large, though. There are some interesting people here, and I'd hate to see them die before they came into their own." She isn't lying. She has enough power that, should something force her hand or irritate her enough, she might do something to hurt this village. If she spends enough time here, it's inevitable that she'll probably be responsible for a broken wall or ten, but she isn't planning it, and she doesn't really count that as a particularly large thing anyway.

Mikoto raises an eyebrow. "Really."

"Really truly." Leah gives her a solemn nod, just as Mikoto's milkshake arrives.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes, and Mikoto keeps giving Leah considering looks. Leah… well, it's a little annoying, but nothing she can't handle.

"Why did you bring me Naruto?" Mikoto asks, looking likes this is the real question she's been holding back. "Why did you know to bring him? Why did you know to come to me? Why did you tell me to bring him to the Sandaime?"

Leah considers that. It's an important question, from their point of view, and there are many ways in which she could tell the truth without telling the whole truth. "Kushina told me."

"When?"

"Before I brought him?"

"Before she died?"

Leah sends a raised eyebrow in Mikoto's direction, as though questioning her intelligence for asking such a question. Mikoto blushes and looks down at her milkshake, which makes it easier for Leah to hide the fact that she's kind of impressed. Most people don't figure it out that quickly, intentionally or not. It's better for Mikoto to not realize that, though. Not for a while.

"Did you know her well?" Mikoto asks after some more silence.

"Not at all." She's grown to know Kushina a little since then, of course, but on that day, they were strangers.

"So why did you do as she asked?"

"Respecting the wishes of a dying woman and helping an infant out of the warmth of my own heart isn't enough?" Leah splays a hand against her chest, a look of complete innocence on her face.

Mikoto blinks, her own expression blank. "Forgive me, but you don't seem the type."

Leah actually laughs at that. It's a new sound, comparatively. She doesn't genuinely laugh very often. Chuckle, maybe. "You'd be surprised. You're not wrong, though. I think I told you that I was interested in seeing what became of him, yes?"

Mikoto nods. "It's part of why I'm not convinced that you haven't got any ulterior motives here."

Leah shrugs. "That was about the gist of it. That boy is going to go on to do amazing things one day. Good or bad, I don't know, but I would not be surprised if he changed the course of history just by existing."

"And he can't do that if he dies as an infant." Mikoto summarizes. "What makes you so sure?"

"Call it a feeling." Because there is absolutely no way she's going to explain what it is that she can see. Mikoto doesn't seem happy with the answer.

"You're confident."

"For good reason."

"And secretive."

"No more than I need to be."

"You need to hide the truth?"

"You wouldn't believe it anyway."

"Mm." Mikoto taps her fingers against the table, obviously gearing up to say something else.

"Your milkshake is going to melt if you leave it alone much longer," Leah points out, with a smile that says I'm helping you.

(Loki was always a good example of how to irritate those around him while seeming like he wasn't doing it on purpose.)

(Granted, that was because he usually wasn't, but he was nonetheless a good example.)

Mikoto took a long sip of her milkshake, as though in defiance, and then said, with no hint of brainfreeze, "You confound me."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I've been ordered to bring you in to see the Hokage."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"I thought you'd say that." Mikoto says with a sigh, and Leah tenses up, just the slightest bit.

Mikoto seems amused.

"I confess," Leah says when it becomes apparent that no one is about to spring out of the shadows in an attempt to knock her out and drag her to the tower by force, "That line is usually where someone springs a trap."

"I know."

"You haven't sprung a trap."

"I know."

Leah tilts her head, wondering just how the conversation turned around like this. "Why?"

"You're of an unknown skill level, but given that you were cloaked in a genjutsu the Sharingan cannot pierce, even several pairs at once, and that you were completely unafraid of the Kyuubi, you've been presumed quite dangerous." Mikoto informs her, sounding almost bored. Certainly quite lazy. The woman stirs her milkshake much like Leah did earlier, staring at the drink as opposed to the woman across the table. "The Hokage hasn't ordered us to fight you or bring you in by force, so for now I can just say that I tried to talk you into it and you refused. I've gotten enough information for the afternoon to not be a total loss, and may have set up a rapport with you. The Hokage would still like to speak with you, but I'm allowed to lapse in that duty if it means keeping myself alive."

"Really, now? I thought shinobi were meant to risk their lives." Leah waves over the waiter to take her glass and ask for a check.

"On risks that have a chance of paying off, that we have actual information on." Mikoto looks up and shrugs. Her eyes are blank and bland. "I'm a Jounin and a Clan Head's wife. I'm too useful and too connected to risk like that."

"Full of yourself and rather talkative." Leah observes, raising one brow.

"Aware of my station and only giving you information that could be found in any Bingo Book." Mikoto counters.

"I suppose." Leah leafs through her wad of bills and takes out a few to pay. "I'll be taking my leave now, if you don't mind."

"Are you going to come back?" Nothing in Mikoto's voice or body betrays actual interest in the answer, but Leah's pretty sure a toddler could tell that she wanted that answer.

(That she wanted the answer to be yes, because there was still more information she needed.)

"Of course," Leah tilts her head and clasps her hands behind her back. "Where else would I find such good milkshakes?"

She turns and steps through a crack between one panel and the next, before Mikoto can utter a word.

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ She really can't figure it out.

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: I have no idea where I'm going with his. Mikoto was not supposed to be a thing.**

 **And yet.**

 **ALSO, I feel like I should inform you all that Leah's thing for milkshakes is canon. She's rather fond of them.**


	9. What Child is This?

Leah likes the world of the living. It's not tailored perfectly to her the way Hel is, but the people are interesting and the culture is… fun. She makes a habit of visiting when she has the free time. Mikoto keeps trying to figure her out, and so do all the other shinobi she inevitably starts running into.

She visits the orphanage one day, and sees the growing infant, crib set aside from the rest and being tended to well enough to keep alive, if not cared for the way the other children are.

She enters the room, empty save for the children, and drops her illusion. She approaches the crib, and carefully picks the child up.

"Uzumaki Naruto…" She says quietly, watching as he plays with her hair, seemingly fascinated. "What is it that makes you so special?"

She can feel the twisted pulsing of the demon sealed into him, the whispered handprint of the Shinigami in the build of his seal, and while it's a hint, it's not enough. There are other demon hosts in this world. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, back in the universe she came from. The touch of a god is interesting, but this wasn't Shinigami taking interest of his own accord, but making a deal.

And yet.

"Looks like you haven't had much human contact." Leah smiles down at him, knowing that a child that young couldn't see how empty of emotion it was. She walks over to a window seat and settles down, holding the child in her arms. She's been in this world for eight years. She existed in her prior for six months. In all that time, she has not once wanted children.

She has the memories of the Leah before her, though. The Leah built of Story. Thousands of years of memories had been subconsciously imprinted onto her very being by Loki's whim, and that Leah… she had certainly considered it. Not often, but she had.

(She'd never followed through, of course.)

Leah doesn't think she wants a child. She's sure that Kushina would resent her anyway. There's something to be said for the appeal of a younger sibling, though.

Her thinking is broken off by the sudden presence of a sword in her throat, pushing through and breaking the window behind her. The masked person grabs Naruto out of her arms and flickers to the other end of the room, watching her warily.

When her thoughts finally catch up to what just happened, Leah calmly reaches up, grabs the sword by the blade, and slides it out. Her throat closes up around the wound, and within seconds, she can speak again.

"Well, that was rather rude." She tries to look reproachful, but she's actually a little impressed. "Did you sharpen the blade somehow?"

The masked person says nothing, adjusting Naruto in their arms as the boy starts crying.

"I'm not going to hurt him, if that happens to be your worry. Nor am I planning to steal him away." Leah glances dispassionately down at her dress and makes a small motion with her hand, banishing the blood.

"How did you get in here?"

"I walked." Leah tilts her head, wearing that small, smug smile that always makes people suspicious.

"How did you get in here without being noticed?" The masked figure clarifies, now rocking Naruto in an attempt to calm him down.

"Magic." Leah says, and drops her gaze down to Naruto. "You're not very good at that."

"Why are you here?"

"I was worried about the child." Leah stands, and starts walking over to the somehow-tenser figure. "You're holding him wrong. Let me help."

"No." The masked figure held up a knife (a kunai, Mikoto had called it), holding in a way that betrayed both expert competence and a need to protect the child.

Leah raises an eyebrow, but shrugs and brings her hands to fold in front of her. "Make sure the child is cared for, then. I'd hate to be upset when I come back."

She takes a look around the room and decides that a portal may not be the best idea near quite so many children. With a sigh, she steps between panels once more.

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ In which someone unexpected comes a'knocking.


	10. Hello, Old Friend

**A/N: The Loki in this chapter is Loki IV, the God/Goddess of Stories, introduced in the third arc of "Loki: Agent of Asgard."**

o.o.o.o.o

Leah smiles.

It's rarely a cruel smile, or a particularly nice one. Polite is the best way to describe it, with an occasional dose of smugness.

It's a smile that Kakashi's quickly learned to recognize, because he's quickly learned to recognize Leah, and she smiles quite a lot. He's now one of the two people that the Sandaime assigns to follow the woman when she appears, along with Mikoto, since Leah seems particularly interested in both of them. Something to do with Kushina and Naruto, apparently. Kakashi thinks, personally, that the woman was only initially interested in them for that reason, and now has others that are even less understandable. He thinks the interest in Mikoto is much like a human's interest in a child, or a particularly clever animal.

(Though he never says it like that to her face, he's pretty sure Mikoto realizes the same thing.)

Leah's interest in him, on the other hand, he thinks is largely related to his Sharingan. She tilts her head, looks directly at his headband, and smiles, every time they encounter each other.

At first it was annoying. Now it's just the tiniest bit alarming.

(There are days where he's actually glad that Gai seems to find them with disturbing accuracy on days when Kakashi is the first to come across Leah. He thinks it might be the peculiar shade of green that Leah's dresses are all made of. It's not like Gai's made any secret of how much he loves the color.)

"Milkshakes again?" Kakashi asks after he spots Leah at Michiko's Café on his way home from training. It's been over two years since he met her for the first time. "How are you not tired of them yet?"

"I only every have the chance to get them when I come to Konoha." Leah tells him as he takes a seat. "I would very much like to enjoy them when I have the chance."

"You're here every few weeks." Kakashi says, as blandly as he can manage, which isn't very bland yet, but he's working on it. There's a certain kind of air he's trying to cultivate, after all; he hasn't managed it just yet, but he's getting there.

"That's not a lot of milkshakes." Leah informs him. There's a matter-of-fact air to everything she says that Kakashi kind of envies; he's pretty sure she legitimately does not give a shit about anything going on, ever. It's impressive and it's not fair.

"I see."

"Do you?" Leah starts to smile again, but the expression drops from her face halfway through. She cocks her head and furrows her brow, looking out the window and dropping the straw she habitually fiddles with.

Kakashi tenses. "What's wrong?"

"…I didn't expect…" Leah trails off, and then stands up and drifts out the door, dropping off some cash at the counter on her way out. It's enough to pay for both her milkshake and Kakashi's pudding.

"What is it?" He tries asking again as he follows her.

"I don't know." She says, and Kakashi thinks she might be telling the truth. "At the very least, I'm not particularly sure. There's something very strange going on."

In the shinobi world, that's almost always code for "something is about to go horribly, terribly wrong and we're all going to die screaming in a fire."

Leah isn't a shinobi, so that might not apply, but Kakashi knows to prepare for the worst.

His fears are reaffirmed when all the sound in the street abruptly vanishes. He's not the only one that seems to have suddenly gone completely deaf, if the stilling shinobi and stumbling civilians are any sign. At least the civilians aren't panicking. That would just be embarrassing.

Kakashi tenses further when music starts up, especially since he recognizes the style after a few seconds. It's that weird Western music that Leah likes, the strange, bouncy thing he doesn't know if he likes the sound of.

"A little bird once said to me, you've got to live a little before you're happy, and if you take a lot, you'll be left with none. I had to learn a bit and live a bit, let it all sink in a bit."

Kakashi sees the bewildered smile on Leah's face before he sees who's singing, and really, he only sees that person when Leah turns and looks up a the roof of the café.

"Karaoke to Zarif?" Leah's hands are on her hips, and her mouth is wide in the most genuine smile Kakashi's ever seen on her face. The person the roof winks and jumps down to land in front of them, and doesn't even pause in their singing. "Really Loki?"

The person (a woman, Kakashi thinks, but he isn't entirely sure) reaches out and takes Leah's hands, pulling her into a dance to the song they haven't stopped singing yet.

The movements look both smoothly practiced and wildly improvisational, a strange combination that really only confuses Kakashi. There are flailing limbs everywhere, but they look controlled, mostly. Kakashi barely knows how this dance is supposed to look, but he's fairly certain these two know what they're doing. Leah's grinning and spinning, anyway, and that's kind of terrifying in its own way.

When the song ends, sound returns to the world with a pop, and Leah and the stranger take a few seconds to separate. They're too busy smirking and staring each other down like they're only seconds away from admitting to having poisoned the other.

"Found you!" Loki finally says, and the accompanying grin is practically feral.

"I noticed." Leah steps back, though she doesn't let go of Loki's hands. "You're not the Loki I knew, are you?"

"Ehhhh," Loki lifts a hand and wiggles it in the air a bit. "Not quite? Closer match to my predecessor than any of the previous changes, though!"

"So, what do I call you, then? In relation to the others?" Leah asks, reaching up with one hand to cradle Loki's pale, pale chin.

Loki leans into the touch, as though starved for it. "God of Stories, I suppose."

"And what do you call me, in relation to my others?"

"The daydream Leah." Loki answers promptly.

"All it takes is whims and daydreams," Leah mutters, and her fingers move from Loki's chin to Loki's hair, carding through the long, tangled mess. "You're so young."

Kakashi is so lost.

(The civilians have long since dispersed, with others taking their place, and the shinobi seem to have collectively labeled this as Kakashi's problem, now that it's over.)

(Assholes.)

"Um," Loki says, and looks almost sheepish. "I, uh… yeah. Kind of. I mean, I have the memories of the others, but I don't… I'm not them."

"A lot like me, then." Leah's hands finally come to a rest on Loki's neck, one thumb held precariously close to a jumping pulse. "The Agent Loki created us both."

"Intentionally or otherwise, yes. We're like siblings! Maybe. Kind of." Loki's head drops to the side a little, and the expression on it is wondering. "I don't think they expected you to last after the Mother debacle." Loki says, marveling at Leah's… existence, maybe? Kakashi isn't sure. He's going to have to compare notes with Mikoto later.

"Whims and daydreams are powerful, but stories can last forever." And when Leah says that, Loki's face lights up, a mixture of complete delight and a sadness so complete that it's almost crushing.

"That's true." Loki looks down at a blue bracelet, and somehow calls down a boombox and a spear from the roof. "I mean, that's why I did what I did, right?"

Leah stills, staring at the bracelet and utterly transfixed. "Loki, what did you do?"

Loki's mouth opens and closes for several seconds, lost for words. Finally, Loki gulps and speaks through a fake, fake grin full of shiny, shiny teeth. "Magic. More powerful than anything I've done yet as me."

"Clearly." Leah's eyes move to the spear. "Why?"

Loki's fake, fake grin softens. "Oh, Leah. There is so, so much I need to catch you up on. But first, you need to meet Verity, which should probablyhappen somewhere a little less public. Probably."

Kakashi's day only gets weirder from there on out, and he can't wait for it to be over.

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_ Take me up on my job offer.

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: Loki is presenting feminine, but the Ren-Faire Nordic style is foreign enough to Kakashi (who knows plenty of shinobi whose appearances don't match their identified gender) that he isn't sure, hence the attempt at not using pronouns for Loki.**

 **The song Loki sings is Box of Secrets by Zarif.**

 **My headcanon for Leah's taste in music is electro swing, and I've got a collection of playlists here. This is what I listen to when I write this story, by the way. Just in case you were curious.**

 **I feel like I should explain Konoha's attitude towards Leah, but it's not like this is a serious story anyway, and I think I've covered it enough in-story, yeah?**


	11. Rain, Rain, Come and Stay

**A/N: Mentions of canon suicide.**

o.o.o.o.o

Leah's in the middle of a small stack of paperwork when something tickles the edges of her senses. She glances over at Rin, who is working on her own, much larger stack, waiting to see how long it takes the girl to notice.

Several minutes pass before Rin sighs. Not looking up from her paperwork, she asks, "So are you going to go check on the latest of Fate's dead chew toys to show up or would you rather I do it?"

"I'll take care of it myself," Leah stands and heads for the door. "Next time, try to tell me as soon as you know something's happened. It wouldn't do for your skills to be in question."

"Whatever you say, ma'am." Rin flips a paper over to her outbox as Leah leaves the room, completely unbothered. It's cute, almost, how much effort the girl puts into trying to be unflappable.

Leah walks lightly through the caverns and halls of her kingdom, her footsteps quiet but still audible. It's a level of noise that speaks to training not in the shinobi arts, but in high society.

(It's not quite true, but it's close enough.)

People come into the lands of the dead in a variety of ways, but where they end up is usually predicated on how they died. This time, the incessant, quiet ringing is coming from self-sacrifice, itself a subset of suicide.

(Leah usually avoids this section; those who commit suicide are rarely happy to see the afterlife, and those who have sacrificed themselves are rarely happy that they can't see the outcome of their attempt to help. They're quickly taken where they deserve to be, but the dead are constantly coming in, and the arrival spots are rarely empty.)

She follows the feeling and finds a man with orange hair and a shinobi headband for a village she hasn't bothered to learn the name of. He seems confused, but the dead generally are.

"Hello," Leah says, catching his attention. "Who are you?"

"Yahiko, of Amegakure." He says on autopilot. "Er, where am I?"

"Hel. The land of the dead, if you're feeling poetic." Leah tilts her head, considering. "I am Leah. Follow me."

"Uh…" Yahiko looks around. "Sorry, lady, but I've been a ninja for way too long to just follow a stranger in an unfamiliar place somewhere."

"You're scared that I'm going to lead you into a trap." Leah says, skipping ahead to the issue. "You don't need to worry about that. If I wanted to trap you, I already would have."

"And I should believe you because…?" Yahiko trails off, eyebrows raised.

Leah lets her smile widen, even as her thoughts begin to sour. His insistence on playing it safe is simultaneously admirable and infuriating. "Everything in this realm is under my control."

She gestures dismissively at the wall, and tendrils of stone shoot out to wrap around Yahiko's arms and neck, lifting him off the ground before he can move away. The fact that Hel stifles chakra usage is ever a boon.

"And I do mean everything." Leah keeps the man in the air for a few seconds longer, watching him strain against the stone, and then lets him drop, the walls returning to normal. "As I said: follow me."

The man grumbles under his breath as she turns around, but does end up following her. He doesn't try to attack her from behind, either, which is quite welcome. She has long since grown used to being attacked by unhappy newcomers that she had, for whatever reason, chosen to greet personally.

"So… you said this was the land of the dead?" He asks after several minutes.

"One of them, yes. You may call it Hel." Leah catches a glimpse of Yahiko's face as she turns a corner, and finds it studiously blank. How cute.

"So not everyone who dies comes here?"

"About a quarter of the flow comes here at the moment, I would estimate. Rin would be able to find the numbers for you." Leah reaches out for the door to the throne room, pausing as Yahiko asks another question.

"And your job is…?"

Leah throws a wide smile at him over her shoulder as she strides into the room, playing up the flair for drama that she'd caught from Loki's thoughts during her creation. "Me? I'm the Queen of Hel, of course."

She feels him pause behind her as she walks to her nice, large chair and ignores the way Rin rolls her eyes without looking up from her paperwork. After a full second, the man seems to snap out of whatever daze has struck him, and hurries in after her. "Wait, what?"

"I told you, didn't I? Everything in this realm is under my control." Leah rests her head on her hand, elbow on the armrest, and smirks.

"She's telling the truth. Just go along with it, and you'll probably be better off than you would have been otherwise."

Yahiko flinches on the spot and turned to look at Rin, who still has her eyes on her files. The girl makes for a comical sight, as young and as serious as she looks.

"And you are…?"

"Nohara Rin. I keep the bureaucracy of Hel running smoothly." She puts her pen down and looks up, resting her chin on the heel of her palm. "I'm basically the second-in-command, and I do all the paperwork. That means I know where you'll end up if you try to go the normal route, and while you're better off than most shinobi… I can tell you that having a job in the afterlife is much more interesting than where you're headed."

"Wait, this is a job offer?" Yahiko turns to look back at Leah, sitting on her throne with her head cradled in her palm, watching the goings-on without interfering. "Are you having fun confusing me or—?"

"Immensely." Leah cuts him off, eyebrow raised. "And yes, it is. There's something about you that the universe has picked up on, so I'd rather keep an eye on you for the time being. That said, I checked the enchantments on my way down and saw that you were a capable shinobi and less amoral than many of the same profession, so I believe you would be useful to me. What do you say?"

Yahiko blinks. "Sure?"

Leah claps her hands and smiles. "That's settled, then. I've been looking to start a Reaper squad to collect ambiguous souls for me the way Jashin's little wraiths do."

(She pretends not to hear Rin's little mutter about finally having a man around, and a pretty one at that.)

o.o.o.o.o

 _Next Time:_ In which Leah talks history, talks business, and talks to an old friend.


	12. Time for Tea

Leah takes a sip of her tea, grateful that ninjas are secretive enough to have cafés with secrecy seals painted into the wood. Granted, she could cast a spell to keep people from overhearing if she felt like it, but that would take effort. The booth is fairly cozy, anyway, and there's a nice, large window instead of a wall.

"Thank you for informing me of the incoming changes." Jashin says, his own cup cradled in his palms. He looks much the same as he had the first time they'd met, clothed in red and gold silk, with half-closed pink eyes and long silver hair. The only real change is that his hair has gone from tied low on his back to pulled tight against his skull in a high tail. There is a wraith hanging at his elbow, invisible to the shinobi and acting in much the same way that Rin does for Leah, though Rin isn't here today.

"I've gone many years without assigning a reaper." Leah shrugs. "Psychopomps were largely unnecessary in my old world, but spirits tend to linger more here, whether out of stubbornness or out of blurring the line in terms of which kingdom they go to upon dying, and I know you have plenty of your wraiths to cull those for you. I felt it was time to begin… building the ranks, as it were."

"You anticipate a war?" Jashin asks, eyebrow raised. It's a relevant question, because the only gods she really interacts with here are Jashin and Shinigami, and the only person she could realistically wage a war against is Jashin himself.

"No, but going by my memories of the old Hells and all their counterparts, it pays to be prepared." Leah swirls the tea in her cup a little. "There may not be war for another thousand years. There may be war tomorrow. Either way, I would like to remain standing by the end."

"I suppose you do come from a world where the larger conflicts do not see fit to confine themselves solely to the living humans and the living world's local deities." Jashin muses. "This world hasn't had a deity attempt to involve themselves in a conflict since shortly before I ascended."

"Oh?"

"Princess Kaguya. She was a human that ascended by chance after eating a cursed fruit. The power allowed her to put an end to the conflicts, and she did settle amongst the humans peacefully for a time, but power corrupts."

"And it corrupts absolutely."

"Precisely." Jashin nods. "Her children eventually sealed her away, but not before she'd nearly put the entire world into an illusion of her own making."

"Impressive, if short-sighted." Leah tilts her head. "Did other deities get involved in the sealing?"

"They may have had more to do with the powers the children gained than most humans suspected." Jashin allowed. "I was, of course, not yet ascended at the time, and as such cannot act as a proper primary source."

"But you've asked Shinigami?" Leah asks with a wry grin, and gets a small smile in return.

"But of course." Jashin's fingers tap along the wood of the table. "The incident was actually what led to chakra being as prevalent as it is in this world, which lead to people being both better at killing one another, and better at keeping their children alive. The population only grew slowly, overall, but the rate of death and rebirth grew to the point where they needed another caretaker for the dead."

"And so they found you." She wonders whether he'll ever tell her what he did as a human to catch the interest of the gods. He hasn't answered her casually posed questions before, so she doubts he will any time soon.

"And so they did." Jashin shifts in his seat, and his pink eyes track to the side. "How long will that woman continue watching us?"

"Mikoto?" Leah asks without even turning her head. "I'm sure she'll approach now that we've acknowledged her. They like having someone around to keep track of me while I'm here."

"Too powerful to leave alone, but you haven't done anything to warrant getting arrested yet?" Jashin summarizes, though she hasn't explained it to him before. He does know the shinobi better than she does.

"More or less. I think they're hoping I'll ally myself with them in the event of a future conflict, or at least bring some sort of business beyond simply frequenting cafes and the like." Leah shrugs. "It's all rather unlikely, but I'm sure they'll notice some more oddities soon."

"Such as the lack of aging?"

"Precisely." Leah smiles, and then sighs. "It seems Mikoto has finally decided to approach."

"She has children with her."

"Ah, I haven't met the younger yet." That actually does have her attention. She turns to look, and—

 _Oh my_.

Fate's pull here is almost as strong as that of Naruto, and definitely stronger than that around Rin and Kushina and Yahiko. Itachi had had a strong Fate pull when Leah had first met him, but Sasuke's is larger, and almost consuming Itachi's.

" _Indra_." Jashin hisses, apparently as surprised as Leah, if for different reasons.

"Mikoto, what a surprise." Leah says, standing to give a shallow bow of the sort that Konoha prefers, much in the way that the Japanese did back before. "And your sons?"

"You've met Itachi," Mikoto's hand ruffles the boy's hair, "And this is Sasuke."

The three-year-old is standing on Mikoto's other side, clutching her hand. He waves shyly at Leah before hiding his face behind Mikoto's leg, staring at Jashin with undisguised interest.

"Hello, Sasuke." Leah says, keeping her interest out of her tone. She wants to _know_ where this child is going to end up. She wants to know _why_ Fate's got him so entangled in her strings.

"And your friend?" Mikoto asks, dragging Leah out of her thoughts. The woman's eyes are on Jashin, who blinks back and nods politely.

"My name is Shin." He says, which Leah finds more amusing than she probably should. She can guess how he's spelling it. The usual kanji for the name, she's learned, is that of _truth_ or _reality_. A fine name, she supposes, but Jashin is undoubtedly imagining it with the kanji for _death_ somewhere in there. Then again, she's fairly certain there aren't any kanji that are read solely as 'n,' so she may be wrong. "I've been told your name is Mikoto. A pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise." Mikoto gives a shallow bow, and then seems slightly unsure of what to do.

"Would you like to take a seat?" Leah asks, gesturing to the booth she and Jashin have spent the past half hour in. "I'm sure the boys' feet must be tired."

While Mikoto hesitates, Sasuke's eyes light up, and he clambers up into the empty side of the booth that Leah had occupied before she stood up. Itachi follows him after a second, and then Mikoto just sighs and gestures for Leah to take her place again.

"Oh, no, I can sit on Shin's side." Leah assures her, letting Mikoto take a seat with her children. She slides in next to Jashin when he moves to make room for her, and she sees the gold patterns on his sleeve, hidden from Mikoto's sight, shift to Nordic runes that the shinobi would be hard-pressed to recognize, let alone read.

 _I call dibs_.

"So, what do you do for a living, Shin-san?" Mikoto asks.

 _Which one? I have my eyes on Sasuke, now. Fate's toys hold an interest for me. I'm building up a collection._ Leah lets the words play out in green light, still on Jashin's sleeve.

"I'm a human resources manager in a company that works in concert with Leah's holdings." He answers, which is just…

Leah wants to laugh, because it is such _beautiful bullshit._ Most of it isn't even a lie, not really.

 _The elder, Itachi. By the time he dies, he will have suffered more than a thousand men five times his age._

Leah smiles as Mikoto and Jashin continue to make small talk, with little white lies peppered all over the place. Itachi's watching them with interest, while Sasuke is poking Itachi to get help reading the menu.

 _Then lay your claim. We've no quarrel._ She pauses, and adds, _Earlier, you mentioned a name. Indra?_

 _Kaguya's grandson. He was powerful and stubborn enough to have entered a very strange sort of reincarnation cycle upon his death. There are two souls in that boy's body; I suspect you will be getting only one upon his death._

Leah almost frowns. That is… unfortunate, but acceptable.

"I still haven't managed to figure out what Leah does." Mikoto informs Jashin, which is true, and Jashin knows it.

"I'm not surprised. She does have a tendency to hold her secrets close to her chest." Jashin agrees gravely, though Leah's sure he would be laughing if he were the type.

"How long have you two known each other?" Mikoto asks, reaching past Itachi to pull a bottle of soy sauce out of Sasuke's grip without looking.

"Since a few years before the Third War." Leah says, since she can't really remember the exact number of years, but it's a good estimate. Maybe ten years? She should ask Rin.

"You must have been very young." Mikoto says, and she looks almost concerned. Worried, even.

"Very young, yes." Leah says, because, well, she was. Younger than Sasuke is now, in some ways. Older than humanity itself, in others.

"I suppose I could ask you to call me sempai, if we were honest about it," Jashin says, the ghost of a smirk on his face, and—

"When Hel freezes over, I'll _consider_ it." Leah says. They both know the event is possible, if unlikely.

Sasuke chooses that moment to interrupt, "Kaa-chan, there's someone weird outside!"

"Sasuke, don't call people weird." Mikoto scolds, and looks out the window. "…ah."

"Is something wrong?" Leah asks. She's visited Konoha too often to pay attention every time something strange happens.

"They're coming in!" Sasuke says, pointing at something outside of Leah's range of vision, and a second later, the doorbell chimes. Staggering footsteps make their way in.

"Er, sir? Sir, you have to wait to be seated." The civilian waitress says, and the footsteps pause. "U-unless you're here to find someone who's already been seated?"

There isn't an answer.

"Hey, who the hell are you?" One of the patrons, a shinobi, demands.

.

" **W̧͔ͤͮh̬̝̦͖̮̰̩̎̿̎ͥ͐͠ą̪̖͇͎̖̦̲ͭ̈̈͂t̞ͧͣ̓ ̱͉ͭͤȳ̛͕̥̗͚ͪ̚o̊ͫ͡ṵ̟̭̩̗̪ͅ ̣̤͖͍̓ͦ͌̿ͦ͒̋c̠̄̂͒͛̆a̢n̳̗͆ͭ'̶̀̿̐ţ̝̱̖̫̻̟͛͊ͣ͆̽̽ͅ ͙͍̝ͪͭ̈́͊ͬͦo̢̥͓u̳͍͚̩̞̞ͤ̆̊̃̂͢t̷̞̲ͤ̈̄ͩͮ͒r͎̹̈̃͛ͯͣͬ͐u̙̤̳̗ͣ̐̏̓ͩn͓̼̦̠̳,** " The person replies, and Leah feels her cold, dead heart stutter, because she _knows_ that voice.

.

"Um..." the shinobi that asked the question seems stumped. "Okay?"

Leah stands up and spins, faster than the usual languid movements she uses when she's in Konoha, and faces the ragged uniform once worn by the Young Avengers' Patriot, now on the body of an Eldritch Abomination from beyond the Void.

"Patri-not?"

.

 **"H͉̘̔̐͒e̫̰̎̐ͧ̒ͭͫ̿̍l̢͉̭̻͚̼̖̝ͬl̨̗̠͈̉͂̉̋̂͛ͥ̚̚͘ǫ̸̘̺̭͙̘̳ͩ͂́̈̓͆̐͊͜ͅ,͇̜͚ͬ͌͆͂͒̿͒ͤ͘ ̧̖̞̘͍ͤ̈ͣͅL̢̹͈̘̳̯̯͎͆̀̐̆̎̚e̡̳̞̠̝̩̼̹̊̿́̎ͤ͛̓ͩͅa̡̾ͫͫ̊̐̉h̷̯̟̭͈̒̒̚͡.ͨͣ̿͑̕͏̻̘͖͡"**

o.o.o.o.o

 _Next time_ : In which the author is clearly struggling to figure out how to characterize an Eldritch Abomination from beyond the Void.


	13. Patri-not

**EDIT: I apparently posted the wrong chapter earlier. My apologies.**

o.o.o.o.o

"…So, you know this man?" Mikoto says, when no one else shows any sign of moving or saying anything.

The man in blue and red turns slightly to look at her, his head lolling unnaturally on his neck. All his joints seem to be a bit odd, actually; everything seems to be either too loose or too tense, more like a puppet than a human being.

"We worked together, before I came to the Elemental Nations." Leah says, and Mikoto files the tidbit away. "I haven't heard from him since I came here."

"I see." Mikoto says, putting a hand to her side to keep her sons from trying to crawl into the aisle to get a better look.

"We should take this outside," Leah decides, grabbing the little green bag she carries around sometimes and fishing out payment for the tea that she and Shin-san were drinking before. Shin-san shrugs, an elegant motion, and slides out from the booth.

(Sasuke starts complaining about how he was hungry.)

"Itachi, sweetie, I'm going to follow Leah-nee-san, okay?" Mikoto's never been able to gauge Leah's age fully, but the first time Itachi referred to her as Nee-san, the woman smiled and called him adorable. The appellation has stuck, and Mikoto is still stuck wondering how old Leah is. "I'm going to give you some ryo, and you can buy yourselves something to eat. Try to keep it healthy, okay?"

Itachi nods, and Mikoto counts out a hundred ryo and gives it to him, then dashes out after Leah, Shin-san, and whoever the man in the red and blue was. (1)

What she finds once she gets outside is not entirely what she expects. She does find Leah, Shin-san, and the unknown man.

She also finds young Hatake Kakashi staring in horror as the unknown man offers him one of his gloves, the uncovered hand—

What.

"Kakashi, this isn't really a good time." Leah puts a hand on the boy's chest and pushes him away, actively ignoring the fact that the man in the suit doesn't have a hand. Or an arm at all, since all Mikoto can see past the sleeve is empty space and darkness.

The man pulls the glove back on, and wiggles the fingers of the hand that, just a few seconds prior, had not existed.

 _Invisibility?_ Mikoto thinks, scrabbling for an answer. _Some kind of kekkei genkai that confers complete invisibility of the body without choice, forcing the clan members to wear full-body coverings in order interact with the world at large?_

The back of her mind suggests that such a kekkei genkai would make childrearing very difficult.

"What the hell is going on?" Kakashi demands, and Mikoto snaps out of her temporary spell of confusion and hurries over. She's got military police credentials, at least; if someone tries to pick a fight like the shinobi inside had, then she'll have the authority to step in.

" **Tic-toc.** " The man says, tilting his head to the side it hadn't been on before.

Kakashi stares in what can only be confusion. The kid is only, what, seventeen? No wonder he's confused. Jounin or not, he hasn't seen the truly strange things that the world has to offer.

"Not them." Leah says, quiet. She puts a hand on the man's shoulder and guides him over to the entryway of an alley. "Why are you here?"

" **What you can't outrun**." The man says, which Mikoto thinks is probably what he said back in the café, when asked who he was.

"I'm not running." Leah explains, patient. She glances over the man's shoulder at where Mikoto is standing, now just a step away from Kakashi and Shin-san. "I wasn't meant to stay back there. I found someplace new."

" **Denial.** "

"Now you're just being stubborn." Leah chastises. "There's nothing left for me back home. I've got a job and acquaintances, and Loki sometimes visits, even."

" **The story**."

"Is over."

" **Never.** "

"It is for me. There are others to pick it up. I heard the entire," she hesitates and glances at Mikoto again with that, and then continues, "company got shuffled around recently. I'm sure there's someone else to take my place. Try asking Loki; they know where the stories are going now."

The man shifts again, and then turns to look at the shinobi. Mikoto stiffens as he faces her.

" **Time is fleeing you.** "

Mikoto isn't sure how to take that.

"He means your time is running out." Leah says, pursing her lips. "Which is true for everyone, really."

'Fleeing' implies something a lot faster than just running, though. Mikoto feels a shiver crawl up her spine, like the man actually _has_ foretold her—

" **Four years?** "

—death.

God, she hopes she's reading the conversation wrong. She hopes she has more time than that.

"I don't know. I haven't checked. I have no way to check, not here. Stop playing around." Leah puts a hand on the man's shoulder again, and pushes him to the side a little as she steps forward. Leah pastes on a smile (they don't usually look so _fake_ , Mikoto thinks; polite and plasticky, perhaps, but rarely like she's hiding something), and addresses the others. "Sorry about that. He's not entirely on top of the idea of social norms. Mikoto, Shin, Kakashi, this is my old friend, Patri-not."

Mikoto hears the word and her brain tries to parse the sounds. Peichurinatto, maybe?

" **They're coming.** "

" _Who_ is?" Leah seems to give up, there. She's… exasperated, maybe even frazzled, if one parses through the mask of perfection and condescension; she's not-so-obviously pretending to humor him. Mikoto's never seen her as anything less than perfectly put together. A glance at Kakashi shows that he's probably thinking along the same lines, while Shin-san mostly seems amused.

" **Not-so-child trickster.** " Patri-not tilts his head. " **Story god.** "

"Yes, in about two weeks, because they've got other things to do until then. And don't call them that, not here." Leah takes one of Patri-not's hands in her own. "I can talk to you, but not here. You're bringing up names and histories that shouldn't be mentioned. Find me at my office, and we can talk there."

Patri-not looks at her for a few seconds, then nods in a jerky fashion that is entirely surpassed in strangeness by the fact that he disappears a handful of seconds later. He doesn't shunshin or kawarimi or anything similarly sensible. It's not even something impressive but feasible, like Hiraishin. The only explanation Mikoto can think of is genjutsu, and that's not possible because her Sharingan is on the second she notices what's happening.

The man dissolves into smoke, starting from one edge and travelling across, and wafts away on the breeze. The smoke itself is dispersed to invisibility within seconds, and all Mikoto catches from Leah is a whispered huff of, " _—such_ a drama queen."

Mikoto doesn't really think Leah has any room to talk, honestly. The woman's own method of leaving Konoha is _still_ baffling people, and it's been three years. She either uses some green portal-like _thing_ that no one else can enter, or simply steps forward and _disappears_ , like she's just walked into another room that doesn't exist. The one time Mikoto had her Sharingan on while the latter occurred, she'd gotten a headache from whatever the hell had happened, with space and chakra twisting in on itself in a way that made her feel like she was suddenly seeing in four dimensions instead of three.

She hasn't tried watching Leah leave with an active doujutsu since then. A few of the other Uchiha and some of the Hyuuga have, but… well, on their own heads be it. If they haven't heeded her warnings, then that's their own fault.

"I'm so sorry about this. I wasn't expecting him to find me after all this time. We hadn't known each other long, and quite frankly, most people assumed I was dead, with how I left, so I thought he had as well." Leah crosses her arms. "I'm honestly surprised he cared at all, really."

"These things happen." Shin-san says, and there's a hint of amusement to his voice again, though his face betrays none of it. "Think nothing of it."

"Will someone _please_ explain what's going on?" Kakashi asks, sounding a little like he's dying inside. "Who was that? What was going on with his hand? How did you _actually_ know each other? What was with the whole 'turning to smoke but not a genjutsu' thing? Why was he even _here_?"

Mikoto wonders how long Kakashi's frustrations with Leah have been building. He's been working very hard at pretending to be laid-back since the Kyuubi disaster, and he's a trained shinobi besides. It's both out of character and unprofessional for him to just spew questions like this.

Then again, he _is_ a teenager.

Hm.

That's something to consider.

"In order: I would if I could, an old coworker; I'm still not entirely sure; we were assigned to a project together for a few weeks, once upon a time; it's his form of long-distance transportation; and I'm still not entirely sure, again." Leah shrugs. "I'd tell you more if I could, but I'm honestly still not sure what he is, where he came from, or what his long-term goals are."

Mikoto has a distinct feeling that there's something more that Leah's tempted to add on, but doesn't prompt her. The woman would have added it on of her own volition if she was willing to say it at all. No one's had much luck in tricking information out of her, yet, and they don't have the legal or technical recourse to bring her in for torture, but she's usually rather talkative.

"But you worked together." Kakashi says.

"Yes."

"On _what?_ "

Leah pauses at that, presumably thinking it over. Mikoto's pretty curious about that too, honestly.

"Trying to kill Loki, really." Leah muses, ignoring their reactions, or at least pretending too. "More accurately on my end, I was forcing Loki to acknowledge their own mistakes by way of intense battle, while Patri-not's goal was a bit more obscure, but still involved attacking Loki and their friends."

She blinks innocently at them. "We've all forgiven one another over that little dust-up. There's no need to look so put out."

"Indeed," Shin-san _still_ seems to find the whole thing funny, "What's a little attempted murder between friends?"

"Exactly!" Leah smiles brightly at Shin-san, and Mikoto's struck by the fact that _this is why they're friends_. This type of black humor isn't really uncommon between shinobi either, but she gets the feeling there's an inside joke here that she isn't getting.

"I," Kakashi say, very slowly and deliberately, as though trying to stay calm around a wild animal, "am going to leave now, and go get a mission from the Hokage that will take me far, far away from you."

"Have fun," Leah tells him as he shunshins off. She turns to Mikoto, finally, "I really would like to apologize for this whole mess. Perhaps another time?"

Mikoto actually raises an eyebrow. "You mean, the next time you come to Konoha and I have to tail you, because Kakashi will undoubtedly still be finding excuses to stay out of the country and away from you?"

"Precisely! I'm glad we understand each other. That said, I really should be going." Leah nods at them, "Mikoto, Shin. I'll see you both some other time."

She steps sideways and disappears.

Mikoto slowly turns to look at Shin, who blinks and—

—aaaaaaaaand he just collapsed into a pile of red liquid, as a Hozuki becomes water, looking _suspiciously_ like blood, and is now slowly draining away into some unseen hole in the fabric of space time.

"…are _all_ her friends drama queens?" Mikoto mutters before she walks back into the café to make sure her sons are eating properly instead of messing around with desserts first.

At least she can count on her boys to provide some semblance of sanity to her life.

o.o.o.o.o

(1) The Naruto wiki states that the ryo is based off of an old Japanese currency that is no longer in use, which had an exchange rate of about one ryo = ten yen. One hundred ryo is approximately ten USD, depending on the strength of the dollar in comparison to the yen (it would currently be about eight USD, for instance).

 **A/N: Writing the Patri-not is... difficult. I ended up quoting some of his (its?) lines from the comics, because he tends to repeat himself a lot, and tried to keep to his somewhat stilted short speech otherwise, but it was still a bit hard. Word to the wise: the whole "they're coming" (but not for a while) thing is actually based on a canon incident; the Patri-not told Leah at one point in the comics the same line, to which she replied that yes, she knew, he had been telling her such for hours, and 'they' had been invited/taunted into coming in the first place.**

 **Also, what pronouns do you use for the Patri-not? I stuck with 'he' in this chapter since it was from Mikoto's POV, but I have no idea what to do for the rest. I'd normally be tempted to use "it," just because... well, the Patri-not isn't exactly human. Or anything we know of. I'm not joking about the whole Eldritch Abomination from beyond the Void thing.**

 **If you want to learn more about the Patri-not, look up "Patriot (Entity) Earth-616) on the Marvel Wiki.**

 _ **Next Time:**_ In which Leah reaffirms her support of the idea that pacifism is for losers.


	14. General

"Incoming." Rin says, and Leah looks up just in time for a few of Fate's threads to tickle the edges of her sense.

"You're getting better."

"I know." Rin flashes a quick smile, sunny and bright, and Leah momentarily remembers that the sarcastic, annoyed assistant she knows wasn't always like that.

She's kind of cute like this, in the manner of puppies and small children. She's barely more than a child herself, so…. Hm.

"You take care of it." Leah says, and turns back to her papers. "Go stretch your legs. If you find something interesting, you have my permission to offer up a job or two."

"You know, I think only hiring people that have weird or strong connections to Fate is a form of discrimination." Rin points out.

"I'm queen of the dead. Who's going to sue me?" Leah's smile then loses a tiny bit of its humor, becoming more contemplative. "Besides, it's not that nobody else _can_ apply. It's just that these are the ones I specifically seek out, in order to keep an eye on them and events in the world of the living. I want to _know_ why Fate decides some people are important and others aren't."

"Whatever you say, ma'am." Rin says, gathering up the last of her necessary papers and putting them into her clipboard. "I'll be back soon."

"Have fun." Leah says, returning to her own paperwork. She wonders, for a few moments, what she can do with the slowly growing population of her realm. She has her reapers, however few at the moment, and Rin, and a handful of people working under Kushina's guidance to create a loyal demonic force. She even has a few people running the day-to-day jobs of the realm that enchantments can't do quite properly. Quality inspectors for the magic, once trained, are fairly adequate at their jobs, and good enough that Leah herself no longer has to spend excess time micromanaging the spells that run daily life in Hel. Sure, none of her subordinates can _use_ magic (she's not entirely sure that their bodies would even allow them to learn, given the nature of this universe), but they can learn to read the twists in the fabric of reality.

She doesn't have a proper army yet, though.

Leah knows, technically, that gods amassing armies is probably frowned upon in this reality. At minimum, it's uncommon enough that she can assume there's some kind of stigma. On the other hand, the reality she was born to was _drenched_ in gods fighting wars amongst themselves and against outsiders. She knows in her blood that she needs warriors, ones that are trained in how to fight battles that don't involve solely living, mortal opponents.

She thinks she might need to train the first few herself. Maybe actually start some magic classes.

(She doesn't want to be a teacher. Loki, though, is very fond of telling stories these days, and what is teaching but another form of storytelling?)

(Also, she has blackmail material, and contacting the All-Mother or Thor with pictures of Loki's slightly drunken escapades from another dimension isn't really all _that_ hard.)

"I'm back." Rin calls from the door, and steps in with a tall man trailing behind her. The man has pulled-back hair and bandages over his forehead, with blank white eyes that lack both iris and pupil. He holds himself with noble bearing, and something in Leah perks up to take a better look.

He's certainly very pretty, Leah thinks, considering the subtle signs of age on the man's face. Perhaps early to mid-thirties? Certainly too old to be called pretty, but it's the best adjective coming to mind.

"This is Hyuuga Hizashi." Rin explains. "He was a Konohagakure Jounin. Kushina can vouch for him, if necessary."

"Yes, we've met, if only briefly. Mikoto introduced us."

Hizashi faces Leah, stock still and holding his chin high. Leah thinks he probably doesn't know how to react to her; finding out that the strange woman that sometimes frequents the local cafés is actually a death goddess must be a bit of a shock. Well, shinobi are pretty used to strange things happening. It might just be resignation, though, since he's had a few minutes of the walk over to compose himself.

"How did he die?" Leah asks. There's _something_ about his death tangling up in Fate's strings and crawling out towards the future, pulsing in a way that says the consequences are uncertain, but almost sure to be interesting.

"My brother's dead body was requested as a… reimbursement of sorts by Kumogakure after he killed an official of theirs that was attempting to kidnap his daughter. Due to the fact that my eyes were sealed and his were not, I offered to go in his place." Hizashi's eyes are fixed on Leah's desk, perhaps in respect.

"That's not the whole truth, though, is it?" Leah asks, tilting her head.

"I wanted to choose my own fate." The man says, raising his eyes to meet hers.

Leah holds his gaze for several moments, well aware of Rin's quiet nervousness off to the side, and then nods. "I like that, I think. Rin? Please explain how perception of Fate here differs from others."

Leah finds the paperwork that is Hizashi's afterdeath certificate and skims over it. Rin isn't wrong about him having been a distinguished soldier while alive; he hadn't been the most powerful shinobi on the battlefield then, but he'd been a good tactician and an effective leader, often responsible for leading larger teams into battle, and usually convincing them to work as a cohesive group, even when it seemed impossible. He didn't lead out of charisma, or through fear, but through trust in his abilities.

("So it's a lot less about predestination, and more about influence and potential and maybe some precognizance. That make sense?")

In short, Leah isn't sure if the man is ready to lead an army, but it's a start.

"Tell me, Hyuuga Hizashi," Leah says with a smile as Rin is just about wrapping up. "How does the title 'General' sound to you?"

Just as the man opens his mouth to answer, Yahiko bursts into the room, grabs Rin by the wrist, and drags her out.

"Sorry gotta get some confirmation on a thing going on in the world of the living and I need Rin for it promise I'll bring her back soon see ya in a few hours!" he shouts over his shoulder, accompanied by the sound of Rin's incredibly half-hearted protests.

"Hm." Leah pouts, just the tiniest bit. It probably wouldn't seem like a pout on most people, but Hizashi gives her one of those _looks_ that she sometimes got from dead nobles, the ones that say 'you're not fooling me nearly as well as you think you are.' Well, the man was a noble himself back when he was alive, after all. He can probably read her expression based on years of dealing with people like his brother and the Hyuuga Elders. "He could have at least knocked."

"Ah yes," Hizashi practically drawls, and Leah turns to look at him. "Someone bursting in and out of your life with no warning or explanation must be _so_ irritating."

Leah frowns at him. "That's sarcasm, isn't it?"

It isn't really a question

"I assure you I hadn't noticed." Hizashi says, the slightest glimmer of humor in his eyes.

"…You've been speaking with Mikoto." Leah decides.

Hizashi shrugs. "She's not always particularly happy with you, no."

"Fair enough. I do aim to confuse." Leah leans back against her desk, hands on the edge in that peculiar way that people sometimes put them, with the elbows locked and the shoulders scrunched up towards their ears. "So, about that job?"

"You want me to lead an army," Hizashi says, "Or at least, that's what I'm hearing from the whole 'General' thing."

"Well, it won't really reach _army_ levels for a while." Leah muses. "I'm thinking of borrowing some structural ideas from this strange little Japanese comic series that Loki gave me a few years ago. I can't use their _entire_ system, of course, but they have some good ideas."

Hizashi shrugs. "I don't think I really need a job now that I'm dead, but I'm sure it'll be more interesting than anything else on my plate."

"That's the spirit. Now, let me just find that paperwork…"

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: The "Japanese comic series" that Leah is referring to is, of course, Bleach. Loki got her a few afterlife comics that he thought would be funny.**

 **As for what Yahiko needed Rin for... I'm sure you can guess.**

 _ **Next time:** Yahiko really did need Rin, okay, it's IMPORTANT._


	15. Reports of His Death were Exaggerated

"Okay, can you at least tell me what's going on?" Rin asks as Yahiko drags her through the dimensional in-between space that makes her skin crawl on the few occasions she uses it.

"I was patrolling through Ame for ambiguous deaths, right? And I took a detour to check in on some old friends. They've kind of gone off the rails so I just stop by whenever I have the opportunity to see just how far they are, yeah?" Yahiko tears open a rip in the fabric of space-time, and Rin suddenly finds herself in the middle of a torrential downpour.

Being dead means she doesn't get wet, but it's not exactly _comfortable_ to feel hundreds of little drops of water phasing through her body every second.

"And," Rin huffs and crosses her arms, focusing on Yahiko. "What does this have to do with me?"

"I… spent a long time thinking the guy manipulating them was Uchiha Madara, who'd somehow kept age from destroying him. But, like… I saw him take off his mask." Yahiko rubs the back of his neck. "I don't really know how to explain it, but it's definitely not Madara, and I think I know who it might be? But I want your opinion since you're former Konoha and there's definitely a Sharingan involved."

Rin purses her lips, but nods. "You could've gotten Kushina, you know."

"I know you better." Yahiko gestures for Rin to follow him, and starts sprinting through the city that was once his home. "And… yeah, you'll understand when we get there."

Rin isn't really sure if she believes that, but she follows Yahiko anyway. She's been to Amegakure once before, and that was with Leah and Yahiko, when Leah was demonstrating proper soul-collection techniques for Yahiko to use.

The rest of the run passes in silence, until they get to a tall building near the center of the city. Rin wall-walks her way up, but Yahiko uses that standing-on-air technique that he's been figuring out recently.

(Rin is of the opinion that Leah shouldn't be taking cues from other universes or from fiction, but she can admit that some of it is pretty useful.)

"I really hope the fake Madara is still here." Yahiko mutters, pulling Rin through the wall and into the building once they're high enough. The wall is more comfortable to phase through than the rain, but Rin isn't completely comfortable until she's standing in the room with nothing but air to deal with.

Yahiko starts to pull the door open, and then stares down at his hand as it goes through the doorknob. Rin isn't particularly surprised when he pouts, but she does feel that he should be used to it by now. She follows him as they begin to comb through the floor that Yahiko thinks the fake Madara is on, and find him in the same room as Yahiko's friends. There's a mask on his face, a strange orange one with black stripes across it, and Rin finally gets a good look at Konan and Nagato.

"Konan is very pretty," She tells him, because she figures that's probably a nice, diplomatic thing to say about the people who seem to be trying to build a superweapon, if the conversation she's hearing is any indicator.

"Yeah, she is…" Yahiko gives the woman in question a longing look, and then sighs and turns to the fake Madara. "I'm… not actually sure how to show you this guy's face. Like, I saw him take off his mask when he was alone in a bathroom with no cameras, but…"

Rin shrugs and lights up her hand with medical energy, leaning forward to press it against the space beneath the fake Madara's mask. The technique won't do anything truly useful on the living unless she completely and totally overloads it, especially since Rin only has spiritual energy these days, but it _can_ incite a very powerful itching sensation since it's mostly the power of the dead.

(Leah likes to let her 'minions' experiment. It's the main reason Rin's been to the World of the Living as many times as she has since she died, and even that isn't exactly much.)

It actually takes a few minutes for the fake Madara to excuse himself from the conversation and leave for the bathroom, which Rin is reluctantly impressed by. People haven't been able to stand the feeling for more than a few seconds in the past, so this person must have excellent self-control.

"Good work, Rin-chan." Yahiko claps her across the back, and after a final look at Yahiko's still-living friends, the two dead shinobi follow the fake Madara to the bathroom.

"Goddamn scar tissue…" The fake Madara mutters just as he opens the door. Rin notices the man look around to check for hidden cameras before he actually takes off his mask, though her view is partially blocked by the door that swings through her body a few times.

(It's a very mobile door that doesn't seem to want to close properly. Yahiko ends up forcing it to slow down and close properly himself, which Rin thinks is a bit of a waste of energy; solidifying their bodies enough to affect the physical world is _not_ a particularly easy task.)

The fake Madara finally takes off his mask, and it takes Rin a few seconds to recognize him. It's been four and a half years since her own death and five since his.

Supposedly.

Apparently, he's been _alive_ and _pretending to be Uchiha Madara_ this whole time.

"Obito?"

o.o.o.o.o

Yahiko is really, really glad the living can't hear the dead unless, like, a whole bunch of effort is put into it. Seriously, Yahiko's tested it, he has to basically _scream_ for them to even hear a whisper.

Except, like, priests and shrine maidens and people who make it a point of their lives to be sensitive to that sort of thing, who can usually get whispers from talking and maybe a vague outline. And the Nibi Jinchuuriki, who basically sees them like _real live people_. Yahiko ran into her once on one of her missions and when she'd _addressed him directly_ , he'd kind of fallen through the roof of the teahouse he was standing on.

("You can see me?" He asked, staring at her.)

("What, are you supposed to be invisible?" She looked down her nose at him, and Yahiko came to the conclusion that this was some kind of defensive cockiness. Maybe she'd recently gotten promoted, and was trying to prove with attitude that she wasn't too young for it. She only looked about eighteen at the time.)

("I'm supposed to be _dead_." Yahiko had answered, and that lead into a long discussion where the Nibi, Matatabi, had eventually interfered to tell them about her particular powers.)

(Yahiko really has to remember to tell Leah about that sometime. Yugito's fun. Leah would probably like her.)

Anyway, the point was that Yahiko is super glad that the fake Madara didn't hear Rin say his real name. Or what is probably his real name. Rin keeps a copy of her genin team picture on her desk, and Yahiko's seen it enough times to see the resemblance between the supposedly dead teammate and the man that's spending his free time manipulating his friends. He's even heard the story of the Kannabi Bridge mission once, which let him make the connection to the admittedly horrific scarring on Obito's face.

"What the _hell_ happened?" Rin asks, still staring in confusion and possibly fear. Yahiko isn't sure. "He was… he was _never_ like this when I knew him."

"I don't know," Yahiko says with a shrug. "I just know that I kind of recognized him, and I remembered your story about the rockfall, and I figured there were really only so many supposedly dead Uchiha whose bodies were never recovered that looked to be about the age you would have been, and you'd probably recognize him even if he wasn't your teammate, right?"

Yahiko stops rambling as Rin darts forward to get a closer look at Obito's face, with the missing eye and everything.

" **What are you doing?** " A voice asks, and Yahiko turns to see one of the strangest people he's ever encountered. Was that a Venus flytrap eating their head?

"The scars just started acting up, Zetsu. I'm fine." Obito says, glaring at himself in the mirror. Well, he's also technically glaring through Rin, so like, that's a thing too.

Rin hasn't moved much. Yahiko gets the feeling he should maybe be worried.

"At least we know why he never showed up in Hel, even though he fit the self-sacrifice schema?" Yahiko offers, trying to get Rin's attention. It works enough for her to turn a glare on him, and he smiles and shrugs in return. "And now you know where he is, so you can keep an eye on him and everything!"

" _If_ Leah lets me do that." Rin mutters, circling Obito. "I want to see what they did to fix his arm. His face is scarred, but I don't even _know_ how they could have fixed the rest without some really intense prosthetics."

Yahiko shrugs, because medical stuff really is Rin's specialty, dead or alive.

"You should be more careful, Tobi. **What if someone comes and sees, you idiot?** "

Yahiko's torn between staring at the plant guy that clearly has two different voices, and probably personalities, and marveling a bit at how ridiculously simple the pseudonym is.

(Probably) Obito give plant guy (Zetsu, was it?) a Look. "You don't need to call me that. 'Madara' will do."

"Best to get in the habit before we're near people we might not have the option of slipping up around." The white side of Zetsu's face smiles cheerily, even as the other side continues with, " **Plus, it pisses you off more.** "

Obito's Sharingan spins to life, and Rin hisses out a breath as it does. Well, at least they know for sure the guy's an Uchiha. Yahiko's pretty sure they're both convinced he's actually Obito at this point, but there's not, like, any proof yet. Just a lot of creepy coincidences.

"You shouldn't threaten us, Tobi. **We saved your pathetic life from that rockslide, and we can take that back any time.** "

Yahiko hears Rin gasp just the tiniest bit at that, and thinks that that probably cinches it. Almost definitely Obito at this point.

"Tch." Obito turns and leaves the bathroom, walking right through both Rin and Yahiko on his way through.

Yahiko catches the look on Rin's face as it switches from heartbroken for her apparently-not-dead friend to determination.

"Rin, whatever you're planning on doing—"

"I don't care how loud I have to be or how much effort I have to put into it. I am going to _make him listen to me._ " Rin practically growls, stalking out of the room. Yahiko wonders if this is the kind of thing she would have done back when she was alive.

He thinks Rin would have been much nicer about it. Hel's been kinder to her than most, but hers is a post that has taken a hammer to her smoother edges and revealed the steel beneath. Rin isn't reluctant to be the one to implement tough love anymore.

"OBITO!"

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N:** **Obito's mask in this chapter is based on the one he wore the night Naruto was born.**

 _ **Next Time**_ _: She knows that they'll_ burn _._


	16. They'll Burn

"Four years we've known each other, and I still don't know what your job actually is." Mikoto says, cradling a mug of tea in her hands. They are in the Uchiha family's kitchen, a new development for Leah. Thus far, they've met solely in public, when Mikoto tracks her down on her visits to the village.

"I know, dear." Leah responds with a smile. She doesn't elaborate, and Mikoto may be too classy to snort in amusement, but she does make a little huffing noise through her nose that communicates the same sentiment.

"You'll be the death of me, I swear." Mikoto says.

"Don't be crude, darling. I'd never be the _cause_ of it." Leah stirs her own tea, and wonders if the sugar has quite dissolved yet. "Though I'm certain I'd benefit."

Well, not _quite_ certain, but Leah has finally decided on what her sigil will be, since Jashin has his own triangle and circle design. It means she can finally start claiming souls before their time, tagging them as hers no matter what manner they die in.

It's basically a prim way of saying "I call dibs!" for when the person actually does die.

Mikoto quirks a brow and then her head jerks sharply to the side, "Sasuke!"

There's a guilty flinch in Sasuke's energy signature, the spiritual side that Leah can sense far better than she can recognize the whole of 'chakra.'

"Sasuke, I told you not to try that technique without supervision!" Mikoto stands and goes to stand in the door, so as to better reprimand her son. Leah watches her go, and her eyes trace down the human woman's form from behind, lingering on certain… areas of interest.

If only Mikoto weren't quite so devoted to her family. Or her husband, anyway, since the boys aren't really all that much of a hindrance in that sense, beyond wanting to make sure they aren't in the way on special nights.

(It's not even like Leah wants a long-term relationship or anything. It's just… it's been a almost a dozen years since she arrived in this world. She didn't have enough time for a roll in the hay at first, but her world has settled down. Hel has settled down.)

(She wants a few one-night stands and she wants them _soon_.)

"Honestly, that boy…" Mikoto says, coming back to the table and breaking Leah out of her reverie. "He wants to be so much like Itachi, and he's going to end up hurting himself on the way there."

Leah doesn't know what to say to that, because the only set of fate's ties that Sasuke has that are _stronger_ than his ties to Itachi are the ones that lead to Naruto. Sasuke is going to be important, but how and why and whether he destroys himself in the process… she doesn't know that yet. There are still too many paths his future could take.

"You always seem to pay more attention to Sasuke than to Itachi." Mikoto says, then. "Why?"

"Do I need a reason to decide that one of my friend's children needs attention more than the other?" Leah asks, tilting her head, and Mikoto's energy flinches, even if the woman herself does not. Whoops.

"Do you mean to say that I have been neglecting my son?" Mikoto asks softly, her voice teetering on just this side of dangerous.

"Not you, no." Leah says, and the flinch pops up again, though lesser now. It's not offense, but guilt on the part of another. Mikoto blaming herself for Fugaku's lack of time, perhaps.

"Tread carefully, now." Mikoto's voice is cold, all Uchiha matriarch, which would probably be intimidating to the kind of woman that Leah pretends to be.

Leah stares back without blinking. Mikoto may be the wife of the clan head of one of Konoha's noble clans, and one of the most politically powerful women in the village as a result, but Leah is…

Much more powerful in almost every sense. Almost laughably so.

She doesn't want to lose Mikoto's friendship, though.

"He's certainly doing better than Kushina's son," Leah says, like it's a consolation and not a horrible, pinpoint accusation.

She's a bitch too, though.

"What are you trying to—"

"I visited him." Leah interrupts, and Mikoto's eyes widen. "He was being fed and cared for to the point of survival, but kept separate from the other children. I picked him up and held him, and was then attacked by ANBU for doing so."

Mikoto's jaw has shifted down almost imperceptibly, not a jaw-drop but close enough that Leah _knows_. Leah knows she's shocked Mikoto with this information, and only the self-control that she's gained as a shinobi keeps her from expressing that fully.

"How did you survive?" Mikoto asks, "and why has Hokage-sama not ordered your arrest?"

"Magic." Leah answers, and then loses her smile when Mikoto's stare hardens. "I am… incredibly difficult to kill, Mikoto. There are some who know how to do it, but even the most dedicated of attackers and the most fatal of blows will do nothing to harm me if certain actions are not first taken."

"You're trying to say you're immortal."

"Not quite." Leah murmurs, looking down into her almost-cool tea.

 _It's just that it's very hard to kill something that was never alive in the first place, and godhood is a good defense against most any attack._

The bijuu could, perhaps, manage it. Jashin and Shinigami certainly have a chance, should they attempt it. Even a few of the Kami among the living would have some level of opportunity.

None would be certain save for Death herself, and even for her… Leah is story. Not just _a_ story, but built of story as a concept, built of narrative itself and given form by magic and reality warping powers.

Even Leah doesn't know what would happen if she were properly 'killed.' No one back home ever seems to die forever, and Leah has a feeling she hasn't lost that property just by jumping dimensions. There are a few, even here, that she can sense evading death in their own way.

(She wants to meet them, fight them, _see them burn brighter than the stars themselves_ as they struggle to stay alive.)

(She wants to see them impress her.)

Those who seek immortality run the gamut in terms of personality, method, motivation, and any number of other personal quirks, but they are almost always interesting in their own way.

"Leah… what are you?" Mikoto asks, and Leah… Leah doesn't quite know how to answer that.

"I'll tell you the full truth someday," She finally says, and it's true. She'll tell Mikoto when the woman is dead and in her clutches. "But until then… let's just say I'm not the only one of my kind."

"A kekkei genkai," Mikoto says with a frown.

"Close enough." Leah allows.

"And why did Hokage-sama never order your capture for the incident?"

Leah actually doesn't know the answer to that. She shrugs. "I didn't attack the ANBU even after he stabbed me. The consistent lack of hostility likely had something to do with it."

Mikoto makes a face. "That doesn't explain why he didn't tell _me_."

Leah shrugs again. "I'm afraid I wouldn't know."

The two are silent for a few moments, only hearing the ambient noise of the district and Sasuke practicing outside.

"Why did you bring him up? Naruto, I mean." Mikoto looks her in the eye, and her Sharingan springs to life. They spin quickly, an image that is probably intimidating to most of the elemental nations.

There's something locked into those eyes, asleep but… so much _potential_. For so many things. For so much power.

It feels like a threat.

Leah resists the sudden and overwhelming urge to rip Mikoto's eyes out of her skull and take them back to Hel. That would be rude.

"Do you remember what I told you, the first time you asked me why I saved Naruto?" Leah asks instead. "I told you that I didn't know how or in what manner, but that he was going to be amazing, that he was going to influence the world in ways no one expects, probably more than any person alive."

Mikoto nods slowly.

"And Sasuke is his counterpart in that." Leah finishes, her gaze dropping down to her empty cup of tea. "They're… tied. Fate has her strings wound around both of them, so very, very tightly, and I _need_ to know why."

Everyone has their own quirks. Leah's just happen to deal with the fate of the word. No biggie.

"And help?"

"And watch." Leah clarifies. "I don't interfere. They don't need my help, and I'm right, my involvement would only weaken them in the long run. They need to make their own way."

 _They're going to suffer, I can tell, and it will burn as Loki burns, but that fire will shape them, mold them, temper them into something better and brighter than they'd thought possible._

Leah wouldn't wish it on anyone to burn as Loki burns, but she refuses to turn a story intentionally. She will sit on the sidelines, perhaps cheer or provide refreshments, but the ball is fully in the boys' court.

Ooh, sports metaphors.

She wonders what Loki would say if they knew she was watching two children walk ever closer to burning as Loki burns.

Mikoto watches Leah, watches the smile slip from her face in contemplation, and hears a whisper of a phrase pass over her lips in a language Mikoto has never heard.

 _"…Loki burns."_

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: Maybe leave a review?**

 ** _Next time_** _: The title says it all, really._


	17. Leah Gets Laid

"This is an absolutely terrible idea." Loki says, grinning cheerily at Leah. She hums noncommittally, watching the mirror as magic edges around her form, changing her dress piece by piece as she decides on what she wants to display tonight.

"I agree, for the record." Yahiko says from the doorway. Leah isn't entirely sure why he's tagging along, but she has a feeling it involves Loki.

"And yet, here I am, still planning to go for a night of dancing in Kumo." Leah says.

"Hoping to get laid." Loki tacks on.

Leah shrugs. "Hoping to get laid."

"You'll probably run into Yugito." Yahiko says, sagging as he leans further against the door. "She's been _itching_ to meet you."

"She sounds like a nice young woman," Leah says, "But seeing as you said that immediately after I mentioned getting laid, I'd like to point out that she is a little young for me."

Loki snorts. So does the woman next to him.

"Hush, you." Leah gives him a light slap on the shoulder. "My age is mine own to determine, considering what you and yours have done to my timeline."

Loki opens his mouth as though to protests, and then subsides with a shrug. "That's fair."

"Are _you_ trying to get laid?" Yahiko asks, eyeing Loki. "Because if so, I'm going to tell you right now that you don't really need to go out."

He eyes Loki's form up and down with a grin; it's a clear invitation, but nothing overtly predatory.

"See, I would? But I'm pretty sure Verity would object to being forced to sit through that." Loki elbows the woman in question, who rolls her eyes.

"I don't even want to go to the _party_ , let alone have to be in the room with you while you get it on with someone." Verity bumps her hip against Loki's, reveling in the fact that, for as long as they are in the land of the dead, she's basically solid. "Having my soul tied to that bracelet of yours isn't exactly doing me a lot of favors on that front."

"Rude," Loki sniffs. "You could totally just wait outside the door."

"I'd still have to hear you, Loki." Verity shakes her head. "Get me my body back and you can have your nightlife to yourself again."

"So I don't know what your skillset is entirely, but could you tie her soul to a puppet or something?" Yahiko asks. "Kushina told me about something Senju Tobirama could do, too, called Edo Tensei?"

Leah's hands and magic still, and the sheer fury and _hate_ that surges through her at those words surprises even her.

Mostly because she doesn't even know what Edo Tensei _is_.

"Leah?" Loki asks, and it's a low murmur, the kind of voice a person uses when they aren't sure if the listener is liable to attack or just distracted.

"I'm fine." She breathes out, and she can feel something in her cold, dead heart stutter and twist.

She doesn't know what the technique does, but she can already tell she loathes it. She wants to wipe it from existence.

"You're scaring the mortals."

Loki's voice breaks her out of whatever flurry of emotion has caught her, and she catches sight of Yahiko and Verity as she turns, reining herself in.

She was throwing out rather a lot of power in that loss of control. Hm. Something to work on, perhaps.

Neither of them actually look _scared_ , per se, but Yahiko is tense, with a hand hovering over his kunai holster (which he's taken once more to carrying around, despite rarely, if ever, actually needing it), and Verity's taking care to keep Loki between herself and Leah.

"I'm fine." Leah doesn't apologize, but, "I'll do my best to keep it from happening again. I've no idea what came over me."

"I'm sure you'll find out eventually," Loki promises, "Because this _reeks_ of foreshadowing, and that means it's obviously going to come up in the future."

Leah makes a face. "I can't wait."

"That's the spirit!" Loki cheers, throwing an arm around Leah's shoulders and hauling her bodily off in the direction of the door. "Now, let's go get drunk and get you laid."

Leah rolls her eyes, but it's not like she has any real arguments against the idea.

o.o.o.o.o

Much as Leah prefers the electric swing clubs, they aren't quite as conducive to her goals for tonight as traditional nightclubs are. If she goes to an electric swing club, she'll be too busy dancing to remember to find a partner for the night.

The normal nightclubs aren't bad, at least. The music's alright and the drinks are strong, and it's non-smoking and dark, so she can breathe freely and join the utterly packed dance floor. There are literal mobs of people, undulating and so very, very close that there's more areas of skin contact than not. Leah doesn't join them, but she thinks she can imagine the appeal.

Yahiko floats up against the ceiling, jamming out but not particularly invested in anything, at first.

Then he apparently spots something and darts down through the throngs of people to meet a girl that just came in through the door.

She's… eighteen, maybe? She's blonde and fit, clearly a shinobi, and there's a strange cast to her eyes. She's very, very pretty, and Leah can see those eyes tracking Yahiko's movements, can see the girl respond aloud to Yahiko's enquiries, ignoring the man next to her.

Yugito, then.

Her fate lines are patchy and thin, compared to most of Konoha's inhabitants, but there's one or two threads that are running strong; she's not a main player in anything, may not even truly appear in the end, but her existence off-screen impacts something drastically. As she comes closer, Leah _feels_ a new line being created, thickening and grasping and connecting to Leah herself.

Yugito comes to a stop before Leah, and bows. It's not the deepest bow the woman could manage, not even in this cramped space, but her eyes flicker to the darker man standing bemusedly behind her and back, and then she straightens up. "You must be Leah of Hel."

"I told her to keep things discreet," Yahiko says, lounging in the air next to them, "Pretty sure she'd be a lot more respectful if we weren't, well, here."

"And you must be Yugito," Leah says with a smile that could, in certain lights, perhaps be considered charming.

"I am," the girl says, and then seems at a loss of what to do with herself.

"I don't suppose you would mind if I found you sometime later?" Leah suggests. "I'd love to discuss your particular powers in a quieter setting."

Relief floods Yugito's eyes. "I'd be happy to do that, yes."

"You're rather interesting, my dear. But, moving on," Leah nods in the man's direction; his fate threads are much stronger than Yugito. "Your friend?"

"Ah, this is Killer Bee. He's… much like me in some ways."

Leah takes that mean a jinchuuriki, rather than a seer of the dead. She lets a smile curl over her lips as her eyes drag appreciatively up and down the man's form. He's not that much older than Yugito, but he's old enough for Leah to have absolutely no qualms about taking him out for a spin.

When her gaze reaches his face, there's a smug little grin on face and raised eyebrow. "Seems pretty obvious to me, but you seem to like the Bee."

…rhyming? That's…

"That's almost as bad as Loki's puns." Leah informs him, because really, it is.

"Hey, my puns aren't that bad." Loki complains, somehow having made his way over from the dance floor to the bar, and throwing one arm over Leah's shoulder so he can properly display his angst over the fact that his puns are awful.

"I heard that." He pouts at Leah.

"I'm not surprised." Leah picks up his arm and removes it from her shoulder.

"She's so mean," Loki whines, and looks at Bee, "Don't let the pretty exterior fool you, she's scary and mean."

"This is…"

"My brother," Leah says, for lack of a better explanation. Going through the whole story would take far too long and probably not be believed anyway.

"You two can get going, if you want." Loki waggles his eyebrows in Leah's direction. "I mean, you may have only just met, but—"

"I feel like dancing," Leah says abruptly. She knocks back the rest of her drink, stands, and gives Bee an inviting look. "Care to join?"

His smile is answer enough.

o.o.o.o.o

When Leah swans her way back to Hel the next morning. Loki is waiting.

"So, how'd it go?" the now-God _dess_ of Stories asks, all sing-song and teasing.

Leah tilts her head, considers how to answer, and then smiles vaguely in Loki's direction. "There were tentacles."

The answering splutter is _incredibly_ gratifying.

(There _were_ tentacles, actually, just not during the actual sex. It was, in many ways, Leah's first time, and she wanted to keep it vanilla.)

(Bee hadn't been able to resist showing off the next morning as they were getting dressed and she asked about the Jinchuuriki thing, though.)

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N: Maybe leave a review?**

 _ **Next time:**_ **STOP DOING THE THING, NAGATO.**


	18. Dammit Nagato

Leah will be the first to admit, at any given time, that her morals are not quite human. She does not think like a human. She does not react to death like a human. She does not regard pain or injury as a human does.

She does have very strong opinions on the matter of _soul theft_ , though.

The first time Uzumaki Nagato plucks a soul from the furthest reaches of her kingdom and drags it back to the world of the living, all of Hel feels her rage. The stones shudder and the demons scream, and all but the highest ranking of the dead souls hide.

"You could ask if this is normal," Rin suggests, watching Leah pace the length of their shared office with a frown. "There are legends about this, so maybe there are regulations for Rinnegan-based reversal of death. Shinigami-sama might know."

He does, and he tells her _not to worry about it_. He tells her that with all the souls that go through this process, _he handles every transaction._

"It'll happen occasionally, with Rinnegan. Technically speaking, the Lady Death _did_ approve it. When they die permanently, they'll return to you, but until then, just let them go. The longer they've been dead, the harder it is the return them to life, and the technique's wielder pays you a tithe in chakra every time he does it."

"So it'll happen again."

"Yes. Leah, it's normal for here. You don't have to like it, just accept it. Rinnegan has been approved as an official way for souls to be returned to the living. If someone else tries a different way, talk to me about whether it's been approved and we'll see about what we can do if it hasn't been."

Leah seethes.

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_ In which our main character finally speaks with the main character.**


	19. Guileless Son

Uzumaki Naruto is four years old when he first meets Leah-nee-chan. He thinks of her as the green lady, because she always wears pretty green dresses that all look like each other, but sometimes he also thinks of her as the bone lady, because there are _bones_ in her _hair_.

That's really cool, for a four-year-old.

There's a scary mask-ninja in the tree above them, making extra sure that both Naruto and Leah-nee-san can see them. The mask means Naruto doesn't really know what color their hair is or what gen… uh… if they're a boy or a girl or whatever, but they have long purple hair and a cool sword. They aren't doing much except watching, though, so Naruto just waves and offers them a bite of his dango. He's pretty happy when they say they don't want any, because that means even more for him. Dango isn't as good as ramen, but Naruto thinks it's pretty great anyway, especially since he's not paying.

"So, um…" He kicks his feet under his chair, because Leah-nee-san has been really nice so far, but he doesn't really know anything about her, or about why she's doing this. Hokage-jiji had made a face when she introduced herself, but he'd also said that she was safe, even though the mask-ninja would be following them. "What are you doing?"

"Eating dango," She answers, and Naruto makes a face, kind of like Hokage-jiji's from earlier.

"You're making fun of me."

"Just a little," she answers. "But maybe try to ask what you really want to know."

"…why are you doing this?" Naruto's voice turns the question into… even more of a question, really. Not just a question in itself, but also a weirdly high-pitched 'is this the right thing to say?' vibe.

"I was friends with your mother," Leah says, and Naruto thinks he understands what adults mean when they say they feel their heart stop.

"My mom?" He asks in a tiny voice. "You knew my mom?"

"Mm." Leah doesn't anything else right away.

"What was she like?" Naruto demanded, getting to his feet. "What about my dad? Why aren't they here?"

"Loud, I didn't know him, and they're both dead." Leah says, calmly sipping her tea. "Sit down, dear, it's rude to stand on your chair."

Naruto sits down fast, staring at her with wide eyes. (Though he doesn't know it, Leah thinks that they are filled with a desperation no child should know.) "Did you know my mom when I was in her tummy?"

"Not really." Leah plays a little with her dango stick. "We met during one of the worst occasions of her existence, really. She was much happier while she was pregnant with you."

Naruto actually _can't think of anything to say_ after that, and then she turns back to look at him. "She loved you very much, you know. I can't tell you much about her, because then we'd _both_ be in trouble with your Hokage,"

Naruto isn't ashamed of the wounded noise he makes. He _isn't_.

"But I can tell you that she did love you, and she died to keep you safe, just hours after you were born." Leah pauses again. "I believe you know of the Kyuubi attack, yes?"

Naruto nods. People don't tell him a lot of things, but everyone knows about the Kyuubi.

(He thinks he feels the mask-ninja in the tree moving a bit. Does he not know about the Kyuubi attack? How can he be a ninja and not know? Naruto's only four, and he knows that's not enough to make him one of the big kids yet, and even _he_ knows about the Kyuubi attack.

"The Kyuubi attack occurred on the night you were born," Leah continues, and Naruto gulps. Oh. He already knew that there's something weird about his birthday, but it's not like he's had a lot of them, and he's only four, so connecting dates in his head is kind of hard. "Much like many parents did that night, she died to keep you safe from the fox."

Naruto's eyes widened. "R-really?"

"I saw her after she died. Given how she was positioned, there was only one interpretation." Leah's eyes glance off to the side again, like she's watching something that isn't there, and Naruto holds his breath as her eyes dart back to him, and she smiles. "Trust me, child; your mother loved you enough to die for your sake. I'm sure her soul is watching over you even now."

Naruto's eyes widen and he thinks his face has gone all white and stuff. "Like a _g-ghost?"_

Naruto is very afraid of ghosts, and it's probably not super ninja-like to admit it, but… they're _dead_. And there's no way to _fight_ them.

"Well, yes." Leah tilts her head. "Something like that."

Naruto makes a low whining noise and looks around. He really hopes there isn't a ghost here.

"Are you scared of ghosts, Naruto?"

(Leah hasn't used an honorific with Naruto's name even once. It's nothing new for him, but while most people do it because they want to be rude and make him uncomfah—unconfor—not comfy, Leah just acts like honorifics don't matter. He's only known her for an hour or two, but the only people she's used honorifics with are complete strangers and the Hokage.)

(And even for the Hokage, she used 'dono' instead of 'sama.' Hokage-jiji had made a funny face when she did that, like he kind of wanted to go to the bathroom but had to hold it in.)

"Yeah." He shifts in his chair, biting his lip. "Sometimes the older kids at the orphanage tell scary stories."

"Mm. Can you tell me why you think they're scary?" Leah asks, and she brings a hand up to run a finger along the bones in her hair. "I'm rather fond of the dead, you see."

"Fond?"

"I don't necessarily love them, but I have good feelings for them." Leah says, all patient and stuff.

"Oh." Naruto looks down at his empty dango plate and kicks his legs back and forth. Only Hokage-jiji explains stuff like that most of the time, but he keeps using big words that Naruto doesn't know. "So like… you want to be friends with them?"

"Not quite, but close enough. I certainly prefer them to the living." Leah explains before Naruto can even ask. "I like the dead more than I like the living."

Naruto blinks. "So you kill people?"

"Hardly. I don't enjoy _making_ people dead, simply knowing that they are. I don't arrange for people's deaths, or cause them directly." Leah makes a face. "I suppose I would make an exception if someone attempted to _raise_ the dead, but that is… very rare in most cases."

"Like zombies?"

"Essentially, yes." Leah's using big words again, but Naruto can understand most of what she's saying. "Now, back to the ghosts."

Naruto shakes his head. "No, back to the zombies!"

"Ah, but how will you get past your fear if you don't confront it somehow? Even talking about it will help." Leah smiles and Naruto starts _totally freaking out_ inside.

He really, really doesn't like ghosts.

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N:** **Kushina was 900% watching them and basically begging Leah to "help a girl out, would ya?**

 **The ANBU was a baby ANBU: Uzuki Yuugao. The anime indicates that she joined ANBU six years before Itachi became a captain, which means she was eleven, which... well, it's neither here nor there. She's a smol ANBU that got stuck with "weird-lady-watching" duty.**

 **Leah calling Hiruzen "Hokage-dono" is actually** ** _still_** **overkill. It's like God coming down and saying "Mr. President" instead of just "Barack." For those who are confused, -dono is traditionally the honorific when you are addressing someone of very high status when you are of a similar status; the usage has somewhat changed in recent times. Feel free to check the wikipedia page on Japanese honorifics.**

 _ **Next time:** Leah and Loki talk designs and talk shit._


	20. Designs

"Cute," Leah says as Loki excitedly shows her a song she found. They are both ignoring Rin, who's quietly working in the corner and ignoring them right back. "I'm not a huge fan of country, but I can't deny the fact that the lyrics are very amusing."

"You liked Young Gods better, then?" Loki says, perching on Leah's desk and swinging her legs back and forth. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love me some Halsey, but I've got a little too much Oklahoma left in me, I think."

"That's your excuse for liking country?"

"Don't need an excuse to enjoy it, darling," Loki says with a wink. "Just think of how much more _fun_ it is if you just let yourself enjoy things."

"I already know that, Loki." Leah rolls her eyes. "I just prefer the irony for the other one better."

"I'd say it's about us, but the song is pretty sexual, so… ick." Loki makes a face. "I mean, you're gorgeous, but seeing as we were both created by my predecessor—"

"We're the closest thing either of us will ever have to siblings?" Leah finishes.

"Not counting our other iterations, yes." Loki makes a humming noise, looking to the ceiling. "I think there's a version of you running around on Battleworld right now. I get the feeling she might survive when the world manages to right itself. I could introduce you once that happens."

"…I think I'd like that," Leah decides. "I expect we would get along, at least somewhat. We would have our differences, of course, but that's not a surprise."

"Mm. Your creation did follow a very different path from hers. You have a little more Loki in you."

"Oh?" Leah raises an eyebrow. "I've thought so as well, but how would you say that?"

"You're less straightforward," Loki says, fingers tapping against the desk as she thinks. "You were built from Loki's subconscious, rather than written into existence and given free rein. You were… you had more self-awareness and freedom than a puppet, of course, but you were… hm. Programmed, I suppose. The Agent Loki, our Ikol, he gave you a goal and a pattern of thinking to get there that were modeled more after his own mannerisms than the Leah he knew. You were still ruthless and mean in the manner that the Leah he'd known was, but the Leah he knew was more likely to break someone's fingers if she didn't like them, rather than go through the machinations that you chose to use."

"I suppose it would be a little rude to my original to say that I like myself this way," Leah muses. She… wants some tea.

"Well, the Leah that you were based on, the Leah of story, did most likely grow up to become Hela, who _is_ somewhat fond of machinations of her own. Not as fond as Loki, of course, but there was a balance there between maneuvering around Mephisto's plans and simply ripping off the faces of the people who'd displeased her."

"I don't think Hela ever used ripping off faces as standard fare when it came to punishments or such," Leah comments.

"It's the _poetry_ of the thing, dear." Loki bounces her eyebrows up and down a little. She laughs as Leah rolls her eyes. "Oh, by the way, you said you were doing some kind of design thing?"

Leah thinks for a moment before the memory comes to her. "Ah, the uniforms."

"Oooh, let me see." Loki leans forward as Leah digs through her desk. "You said you were having trouble because it wasn't really something any of the groups either of us have worked with did much, right?"

"Mm." Leah finds the folders. "Most of story Leah's interactions were with other afterlife realms that rarely chose to use uniforms, and the closest to uniformed groups that the real world ever chose to send her way was… the X-Men, I believe."

"And that was mostly just color schemes and an X somewhere, save for a few iterations of the team." Loki flips through the folders that Leah gives her. "You drew these?"

"No, I'm not that skilled. Kushina and Yahiko did most of the drawing, while Hizashi and Rin made a number of suggestions."

"Hizashi's the pretty one, yes? Well, they're all pretty, which is rather strange to consider, statistically, but the one with the pale eyes?"

"Mm."

"Alright, then." Loki flips through a few more. "So… you're going for a look that mixes the local culture with something a little more familiar, then?"

"Yes. The entire continent seems to have been heavily influenced by Japanese culture, even in places that have other influences as well, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"It must have been some impressive colonization to get an entire planet like that," Loki muses. "Can you imagine how much culture must have been crushed under iron heels?"

"I can." Leah reaches over and taps the papers. "The designs, Loki."

Loki snorts and looks down. "Well, you've got a color scheme, at least. I'm going to go ahead and say you're probably best off having a few different versions anyway, depending on the formality of the setting and what the actual job is. Your paperwork ghosts are going to have a very different uniform from the demon wranglers, yeah?"

"Of course, though the majority are former shinobi, and will insist on something they can fight in no matter what."

"Hm." Loki sifts through. "I think I like this one as a sort of… business casual, I guess?"

Leah takes the one he's looking at and considers it. "I think Rin designed this one based off of what she remembered of a girl a few years older than her."

"Yeah?"

"Mm. The girl left Konoha a few years before Rin died with… one of their legendary shinobi. One of the Sannin?"

"Katou Shizune, and she left with Senju Tsunade of the Densetsu no Sannin," Rin says aloud from her desk. Neither Loki nor Leah start at the sudden interjection, but they're fully aware that they both managed to forget that she was in the room with them.

"Well, I do like it," Loki says. "Kind of looks like you mixed the various kimono top styles with a business jacket. A little too long for the jacket, but nowhere near long enough for any of that traditional stuff, right?"

"Mm," Rin says. "I did also shorten the sleeves by quite a bit. Not the length down the arm, but the free-hanging part. It's… honestly, I just took Shizune's style, shortened the hem to make it more of a jacket than a dress, and changed the coloring to Leah's designs. Then it's just pants and, for some reason, closed-toe boots."

"The very existence of those open-toed monstrosities offends me." Leah sniffs. "Either go for boots or go for sandals, but _commit_. Honestly, they're awful."

"And the colors are… very similar to mine." Loki smiles at Leah. "I'm surprised at the gold. I didn't think you liked it very much."

"It's a little more subdued than yours, but I do enjoy my precious metals. Just… not so much on the glitter." Leah shrugs and fingers the gold edging on her sleeves, which is actually brighter than the burnished color she prefers, but it suits the dress more this way. "The other Leahs did as well."

"Yeah, I can tell. That's… hm. Yeah, a lot of the designs are just basic black with dark green edging or just mostly dark green… did you try to isolate the gold to the sigil on purpose?"

"But of course."

"Fair enough." Loki bites her tongue a little as she stares down at the designs. "You'd probably be best off going for something very local for the fieldwork teams."

"I figured. I think Hizashi and Yahiko were arguing over those, but Kushina suggested some designs of her own." Leah passes a hand over the files, and a few separate themselves out and float up to eye level. "Thoughts?"

"I like these. Very intimidating." Loki takes one of the sheets. "Keeping the masks bone-white?"

"Mm, I think that would be best." Leah muses. "That's the Konoha ANBU-based design. Yahiko will be disappointed."

"He's…"

"The only one of my higher-ups that isn't from Konoha."

"Ah." Loki leans back, eyes glazing over. "Oh my. Well, if you're hiring by concentration of fate lines, then I can see why. The world's stories are _very_ concentrated there."

"I noticed." Loki looks back down at the designs. "I'd exchange some of the armor for something more reminiscent of the Valkyries. If the humans start being able to see your reapers, then you need something to set them apart, yes?"

"My original did quite like the Disir," Leah says, considering. "Perhaps winged helmets? Their armor is designed for ease of movement, so I'd rather not exchange it for metal, and disguising it as gold or silver would just look tacky."

"Too much gold always looks tacky, if you aren't careful." Loki laughs. "I can pull it off, and Iron Man did very well in that regard, but there are many who do not."

"Of course," Leah says, rolling her eyes again. "Loki never looked tacky, after all."

"That's sarcasm. I'm offended." Loki hops off the desk and spins, gesturing at Leah with a spear that she'd most certainly not been holding a few moments earlier. "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?"

"I'm not a Shakespeare fan, Loki."

"Blasphemy!" Loki gasps, hand to chest in mock offense.

"I'm a god, dear. I very much doubt that blaspheming is even logically possible for us."

"You're _awful_ ," Loki insists.

"No, I'm fairly certain that _you_ are the awful one in this scenario."

"You're both terrible, if you want my opinion," Rin chimes in from her desk, not even looking up at them. "Complete travesties."

"That's a lot of backtalk for one subordinate," Loki comments. "Leah?"

"She amuses me."

"Alright, then!" Loki claps her hands and spun back to the desk. "I'm bored of talking designs. Let's go party!"

"I have _work_ , Loki." Leah reminds her. "And while I know you insist on your freedom of choice and such, my work requires rather a lot more hands-on administrative duties."

"Yeah," Loki sighs, leaning on the spear. "You've always been tied to your duty, even as just a memory of another girl."

Leah shrugs. "I am as I was created to be. I just have a little more free will now."

Loki blinks at her with eyes that are suddenly far sadder than they have any right to be. "Um… do you think… do you think your other self will like you?"

Leah tilts her head. "Are you worried that she won't like _you?_ "

Loki's arms come up to hug her elbows, and she shrugs, visibly uncomfortable. "I don't think anyone really _likes_ me. Verity, maybe. You, sometimes? I just… I mean, I don't have a lot of… of _existence_ to work with, y'know? But the other Loki's memories, they… they didn't exactly have friends, you know. They died believing that Thor hated them, and he _did,_ because they killed the child Loki, and the Young Avengers were _nice_ , but they were more invested in _changing_ the Agent Loki than in liking them, and everyone else only ever really wanted to _use_ Loki, so…"

"Didn't Odin say something about loving Loki no matter what? The whole 'and my child who is both' thing?" Leah asks.

Loki shrugs. "It's _Odin_. I don't really trust anything that comes out of his mouth on that front."

"Fair enough," Leah shrugs. "I can't really speak for my other self, Loki. You'll have to figure that out on your own."

Loki frowns. "I know. That's what bothers me."

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:** Leah takes Kakashi to the big city. In the ~real world~._


	21. Country Mouse

**A/N: I... was not planning on this chapter happening. It somehow happened anyway? Assume that the NYC depicted is not any of the ones in Marvel (hence no supers), and that it doesn't have Naruto present as a franchise (hence Kakashi being dismissed as a random weirdo).**

o.o.o.o.o

Kakashi feels a chill in the room when Leah enters, something that brushes up his back and leaves him just a little terrified.

She smiles at him. "Hello, Kakashi."

No honorifics.

"You know what this is about," Kakashi says, keeping his voice as even as possible. "Any comments before we begin?"

"This is unnecessary and ultimately going to help no one."

"Noted." Kakashi tries his best to come across as unimpressed. "First question: how did you meet Kushina?"

"Her ghost had some impressive threads of fate, and I wanted to know more."

Kakashi doesn't sigh. This is going to be a long afternoon.

o.o.o.o.o

"We both know I could have broken out at any time, Kakashi."

Leah's waiting for him outside the Hokage tower after Kakashi hands over the reports of the fruitless interroga—he means interview. The interview.

"Leah-san." He nods at her, utterly unsurprised to see her. "I don't suppose you're here for a _reason_."

"Are you allowed to leave the village tonight? Not permanently, but… for fun. A single night."

Kakashi tries very hard to keep his visible eye from widening. He drawls, instead, saying, "I could, but quite frankly, I don't trust you."

"You need to relax, child. See the sights. Enjoy life." There's a strange sort of smile on her face, and her eyes drift to the side, as if looking at someone else. "So many have died to keep you and your generation intact. Don't throw your life away in penance."

"You know nothing about me." Kakashi keeps his voice cold. "Or those that died for me."

"Oh, I'd say I know some of them better than you ever did," Leah muses. "But how about an exchange? Something to help with those pretty little reports you're always giving your boss about me?"

Kakashi… _would_ like something to hand over to the Hokage. "What are you proposing?"

"If you come with me for the night, I'll let you experience my personal teleportation technique, and show you a place you've never seen before. A place _no one_ from Konoha has seen before." The grin curls. "I promise I'll bring you back unharmed, save for maybe a hangover."

He breathes in. Holds the breath as he thinks. Lets it out slowly. "I would need to inform someone of where I'm going."

"Is that a yes?" Leah asks, head tilted.

Kakashi nods. "If I have permission from Hokage-sama."

"By all means," she says. "Go right ahead."

o.o.o.o.o

Following Leah through her teleportation technique is terrifying. It feels like he stops existing in three dimension for a moment, but rather goes down to two, then one, then fifteen, and then it's all gone.

"Are you alright?"

Kakashi stays bent over for a moment, catching his breath. His eyes are tearing up, and there's saliva pooling in his mouth like a warning that he's about to throw up.

"What," he gasps, "was _that?_ "

"Step one," Leah says. "Getting out. The next step, of course, is getting _into_ somewhere new. I'm going to give you two options for where, of course."

Kakashi looks up as he starts regaining his bearings. "Where… where are we?"

Everything is white. There is no floor, or ceiling, or walls. If there were a floor, there would at least be shadows, but… there is nothing. Just whiteness, as far as the eye can see.

"A place between panels," Leah says. "Though that's largely unimportant. It's a conceptual space that doesn't quite exist the way the rest of reality does. Of course, my old reality has yet to reassert itself anyway, but Loki's done well in keeping me up-to-date on how that's going."

Kakashi has no idea what's going on.

"Option one," Leah says, continuing from earlier, "is that we go to a city with a population of approximately 8 million people, most of whom speak a language you do not know, with a culture you do not recognize, and technology you do not understand. Option two is that we go to a city with a population of approximately 30 million people, most of whom speak a language you _do_ know, with a culture more superficially similar to yours, and technology you also do not understand. Option one is closer to what I identify with, while option two is going to be easier for you to navigate. I _can_ provide a translation method if we go to option one, and it is slightly less intimidating in terms of things like the height of the buildings and such."

Kakashi stares at her.

The most impressive cities that Kakashi has ever seen, or even heard of, have populations that number in the hundred-thousands.

To nonchalantly name cities with populations in the _millions_ is… it's daunting.

"Option one," he says after a moment. It's apparently more likely to lead him to understanding Leah, so he might as well.

"Wonderful," Leah says, and holds out a hand in his direction. She wiggles her fingers once, and raises an eyebrow. "Well? I do need to take us there."

Kakashi braces himself for another gut-wrenching experience, and takes her hand.

"I'll go easy on you this time."

o.o.o.o.o

They land in an empty alleyway. The buildings on either side, Kakashi notes once he gets his bearings, are made of red bricks, and pockmarked with age.

"Feeling better yet?" Leah asks.

Kakashi takes a moment, and then nods. "So, an alley?"

"Didn't want to surprise any civilians by popping up out of nowhere." She waits for him to stand up, and then gestures for him to follow her. "Come along. We're in Queens right now, and I'd like to get us into Manhattan as quickly as possible. Again, we have a few options."

"I'm listening," Kakashi says, and sticks his hands in his pockets. As Leah leaves the alleyway, he follows, taking in as many sights as he can. Leah was right when she said he wouldn't understand anything here; everything looks like it's been written in the writing system that Kumo uses.

"I could get us a taxi, which is one of those yellow vehicles, or we could take the subway, which is an underground train, or we could take the bus, which is an above-ground vehicle used to take large numbers of people from one area to another. We could also take the taxi to the bridge, walk to Roosevelt Island, and then take the Aerial Tram over to Manhattan." Leah lists off.

Kakashi stares at her. "And you would suggest…"

"The Aerial Tram. It provides a very… different sort of view of the city."

"Right."

"No chakra, Kakashi. Pretend you're just another civilian on vacation."

o.o.o.o.o

An hour or so later, Kakashi steps off the tram behind Leah, follows her to a somewhat empty part of the street outside, and then just stares at the ground for a while.

"Kakashi?"

" _How._ "

"I told you it was a large city."

"That wasn't just large, that was… that was Amegakure on steroids!" Kakashi stares at her. "Why are the buildings so big?"

"To house the very large population and all the businesses that come along with it." Leah pulls out a sheaf of paper. "Here's a map, by the way. I got one at the tram."

Kakashi opens it and scans through it. He doesn't understand a word. "Where—"

"Here," Leah says, and points to exactly where they are. Her finger moves elsewhere. "This is where we came from."

"That's…" Kakashi keeps staring at the map. It makes him feel very small. He focuses on a large green rectangle. "Is this a _park?_ "

"Central Park, yes. It's rather famous, in this… region."

"It looks large enough to fit all of Konoha," he whispers.

"Oh, hardly. Your sense of scale isn't working quite right, because of how _big_ everything else is."

Kakashi tries not to feel offended.

"Konoha is some twenty or thirty times larger than Central Park. It's just that it's not nearly as densely populated as New York City, so it feels smaller." Leah turns bright green eyes on him. "Are you quite alright?"

"You're being a little condescending," he informs her. "Also, I feel like the buildings are closing in on me. I… I need to move."

Leah nods. "Let's go to the park, then. You can get a good look at the buildings from there with less claustrophobia."

Kakashi tries to protest and say that it isn't claustrophobia, but Leah's already got his wrist in her hand, and is leading him down a street. West, he thinks, checking the sky.

o.o.o.o.o

The park does feel less like it's pressing down on him, but it's still unnerving. When he looks around, there's towering buildings in every direction, hundreds of feet tall and made of steel and glass and cement. Even from a distance, with something close to nature in between them, they are cold and intimidating, like a reminder of a cage that keeps the people below trapped like rats.

There are a lot of civilians here. They seem happy.

"I find it comforting," Leah says without prompting. He looks at her. "You probably hate the way that the park is enclosed on all sides by the skyscrapers, but to me, and many others who were built from the ground up in environments like this one, it's like a protective wall."

"It feels wrong," Kakashi says after a moment. "People should… cities and towns should be concentrations of urbanization and populations, surrounded by nature as far as the eye can see. Not a patch of nature surrounded by buildings without end."

Leah shrugs. "It ends eventually. It's just much, much larger than you're used to."

"You've mentioned."

She laughs. "Have you ever heard the story of the country mouse, Kakashi?"

He shakes his head, and she tells him. Her words weave a story, and it's nice, but also a little… unnerving.

Words should not paint pictures the way hers do.

His hand feels cold.

o.o.o.o.o

"Here's a list of tourist destinations," Leah says as she hands him a small pamphlet. It's in a language he can actually read. That's nice. "Pick one."

Several extremely tall buildings. A giant statue. Some famous neighborhoods. A ferry. Some museums. A memorial.

"What would you suggest?" He asks after a long moment.

"Hm… Times Square, the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, and… hm. The 9/11 memorial can give us the opportunity to wander around downtown a little before we visit the Statue of Liberty." Leah smiles at him. "And lucky for you, I'm fully capable of bypassing all those silly lines without making anyone suspicious."

"And all without chakra," he mutters, but he follows her. He raises his voice for the next question. "And how are we going to get wherever we're going?"

"Well, we're going to walk to Times Square, then the Empire State Building. We can take the subway down to the memorial, and we'll figure out how to get to the Statue from there."

"And then back to Konoha."

"Well, if you don't want to have a little fun, first, sure." Leah smiles encouragingly at him, but it feels oddly predatory. "I do know some interesting bars and such, and I'd have very little trouble with faking identification for you."

Kakashi makes a face, even though he knows she won't be able to see it. "We'll see."

o.o.o.o.o

Times Square feels like the very _concept_ of overstimulation turned up to the extreme. It's too loud, too bright, too crowded, too smelly, too _everything_. There's advertisements on every surface, people in costume, hordes of tourists, and yet more of those large metal vehicles that look very prepared to kill someone.

Kakashi doesn't like it at all.

"It can be a little overwhelming, I know."

Kakashi is sitting on a little chair at some… some plaza thing? He isn't sure. There's rickety little metal tables and chairs all over, and Leah bought them some large, soft pretzel things. Hers has cinnamon sugar all over it, while Kakashi's is some plain thing that comes with cheese dip.

(It's hard to eat without showing his face, but he manages.)

It's… not a bad food, at least.

"You lived here?" He asks.

"Not quite, but it's close enough. This is a close analogue to a certain place back home, the place where everything went down."

"Went down how?"

Leah smiles at him. "Finish your pretzel, Kakashi. I'll explain later."

Kakashi is glad to leave the crowds at Times Square.

(He thinks he can almost hear Leah whisper "Fucking tourists," but… that doesn't really seem like her. She wouldn't swear like that.)

(Would she?)

o.o.o.o.o

"Getting vertigo yet?"

"No."

Kakashi isn't lying about the vertigo, but that doesn't change the fact that the situation is uncomfortable at best for him. There's something about seeing this city from atop the tallest building ther that makes him feel very, very small.

It's like the view from on top of the Hokage Monument, except there, you at least see the trees take over again soon enough.

There's no end in sight to the urbanization, save for where the ocean takes over.

"How many people did you say lived here, again?"

His voice feels small, too.

"Eight million in New York City. Manhattan alone is a little over one and a half million. The entire metropolitan area… somewhere around twenty-three, maybe twenty-four million." She says it like it's no big deal.

Kakashi takes a deep breath. "That's… a lot of people. I doubt there are that many people in the entire Hidden Continent."

"Fifteen million," Leah confirms.

Kakashi wants to ask how she knows, but his brain feels a little fuzzy.

"The scale can be confusing, I know." Leah pats him on the shoulder. "You get used to it, after a while."

"The scale?"

"The feeling that, however large the universe is, nothing you do is going to have that big of an impact on the future. The city's size is just the first step, really."

Kakashi stares at her for a moment, managing to tear his gaze away from the city below. "You say that like it's a good thing."

She shrugs. "I don't know about you, but I find it comforting. With all the trillions of life forms that even a single galaxy could contain, do you think the universe is going to judge you just for messing up a little? A failed test, a fall into a mud puddle, a loss of control… what does the universe care?"

Kakashi turns away. "That's… not comforting to me."

"I suppose not."

Kakashi stays here for longer than he should.

It's so… grey. The air is hard to breathe. There are spots of color, but they either stand out unnaturally or are washed out.

But there's sunlight, and visibility is high, and it means he can see forever and it is _terrifying_ , in its own way.

o.o.o.o.o

The subway is disgusting and crowded and Kakashi hates it.

o.o.o.o.o

Kakashi should have guessed that Leah would make a beeline for an ice cream truck. It wasn't a milkshake, of course, but it was something.

He takes one after she orders, and follows her, one hand in his pocket and the other holding the ice cream so he can sneak licks when Leah isn't looking. It feels more cramped here than it did further North. The number of people is roughly the same, but the buildings are closer together, and still fairly tall, and feel like they could topple onto him at any moment.

They're also darker in color, so that might be part of it. The dark grey of the buildings washes things out even more.

The memorial that Leah leads him to is an undoubtedly strange reverse fountaint of sorts.

"What is this memorial _for?_ "

"Two of the tallest buildings in the world used to stand here." Leah's fingers go tap-tap-tap against the cool black stone. "Fifteen or so years ago, an airplane—"

The flying metal contraptions that Kakash's seen crossing the sky, that supposedly have hundreds of people inside of them.

"—crashed into both. Including the other attacks of the day, and those who died in an attempt to save those trapped inside, over two and a half thousand people died as a result of the attacks. Still more have died since then as a result of illnesses or disabilities that they contracted due to the events, like lung diseases from smoke inhalation and such."

Kakashi stares down at the water. Much as he hates to admit it, that feels like it's… not enough. Kakashi is so used to death that even a few thousand feels like it's not enough for… for a memorial.

Then again, this feels more senseless. "Was it an accident?"

"It was blamed on terrorism, though there are a number of theories that indicate that the government was responsible." Leah shrugs. "Either way, it pushed the world into some very unfortunate wars that have resulted in many, many, _many_ more deaths, most of which were wholly unnecessary."

"You… don't sound too torn up about that." He hesitates to say it, but she doesn't usually seem insulted when they point out things like that, so…

"It's senseless violence, really. I pity people for the pain they go through, but death is… death and life are simply states of being. One or the other, I don't really care. They are, in my eyes, the same."

Kakashi feels a cold shudder work its way up his back. Right. That.

Leah smiles at him. "Would you like to go to the statue now?"

o.o.o.o.o

The statue is less of a problem than the rest of the day, to Kakashi. It's on a tiny island in the open ocean, and even if there's not a clear path to _open_ ocean in view, it's still less cloyingly claustrophobic than the city. The story behind the statue and the nearby "Ellis Island" are more optimistic than some of the other things he's heard today, and he feels himself relax, if only a little.

"Now, how about a drink?" Leah asks. "I could do with a gin and tonic."

Kakashi makes a face. "Now? Isn't it about time we returned to Konoha?"

Leah shrugs. "We could, or…"

"I'd really prefer not to return to the city," Kakashi informs her, steady and staid.

A strange look crosses her face. "Well, there is _one_ other place we could go… very rural, much smaller, maybe a few hundred inhabitants in all."

Kakashi raises his visible eyebrow.

"My childhood memories are rooted there." Leah offers, a glint in her eyes like she knows just how tempting that is too him. Just how tempting _any information at all_ on this woman is.

"…Fine."

o.o.o.o.o

Oklahoma, she calls it. Broxton.

There's a little diner, and milkshakes, and coffee. Kakashi's pretty glad they didn't go to the nearby bar; he's not really in the mood for alcohol.

"You're not old enough, anyway." Leah tells him, playing with her straw. "Minimum age for alcohol in this country is twenty-one."

Kakashi wrinkles his nose. He's not a big fan of alcohol, but that seems a little high.

"It's because the brain doesn't stop developing until twenty-five, and is still sensitive to damage from alcohol before that age," Leah says. "Don't worry about it."

Kakashi shrugs. He leans forward to rest his elbows on the table, crossing his arms, and looks out the window. "So this is where you grew up?"

"Something like that." Leah looks out the window, and there's something like regret and nostalgia in her eyes, if Kakashi's reading them right. "It's a little complicated."

"Is it now."

Leah gives him that irritating little half-smile. "Yes."

"You've been doing that all day," he says. "Saying that everything is close but not quite your home."

"I'll explain someday." A dollop of whipped cream licked off a straw. "Just not today. You got enough information today, I think."

Kakashi has to admit that he's gotten more in this one day than anyone has thus far. "I suppose."

"Finish your coffee, Kakashi, and I can get you home."

o.o.o.o.o

Kakashi stands in front of the Hokage, trying to figure out how to explain what, exactly, it was that he saw and experienced while on a day out with Leah.

"Can I use a genjutsu?" He finally asks.

(Konoha feels very small, right now.)

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next Time:_** _Time for some PR._


	22. Queen of the Dead

"You know, I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore," Rin sighs, standing back as Leah turns slowly in front of a large mirror. "I mean, I'm not even _actually_ surprised. Just resigned. Tired. I want a normal job."

"There are no normal jobs for the dead, dear," Leah reminds her.

"I know," Rin deadpans. "Do you actually need me here? I have paperwork to do, ma'am."

"I do need to know if this is something your people would find appropriate for the circumstances," Leah says, turning her gaze towards Rin and smiling.

"…well, I'd give it a definite yes. Maybe ask Yahiko or Hizashi."

o.o.o.o.o

Leah does not dress as Hela does, nor as the true Leah. She has simpler tastes, for a variety of reasons, but she has definitely inherited their flair for the dramatic.

The Leah of old wore bones in her hair, and Hela has her helm. This Leah is plenty content with her simple bones for daily activities, but for something special… she has to take it farther.

She may take a cue from Loki, on this occasion.

Lace of finely-wrought silver creates a mask over her eyes and nose, becoming a true helmet as it crosses her hairline and moves further back. It's carefully held in place with magic, so that the spiraling antelope horns, clearly made of pure white bone, do not overbalance it as they extend up and back.

Her hair remains unbound in this form, and her dress is not her usual, but it remains simple enough; sheets of gauzy green fabric fall in layers over her legs, just shifted around each other enough to provide the occasional glimpse of pale skin without ever truly showing what lays beneath, and though she retains her customary high collar, her arms are bare save for wisps of bare fabric tied from shoulder to elbow to wrist in a manner reminiscent of the old Greeks.

If her eyes are just shadowed enough for a green glow to be the only thing anyone can make out, if her skin is of a pallor she would not retain normally, if there is green-black smoke seeping from the ground she walks over, then it is only to hold the image she wishes to portray to humanity.

"All stories begin somewhere, Yahiko," she whispers with a smile, setting foot in a little village outside of Kirigakure. "Let us plant the seeds of mine."

He stands behind her, clad in his own work uniform; it's a heavier armor than he wore as a shinobi, but there are still swathes of dark fabric. His helmet is a tarnished steel in a shape reminiscent of the Disir, coming low over his nose and eyes, with decorative wings not unlike Thor's sweeping back from the temples.

"You do _not_ do things halfway." Yahiko jumps straight up and lands clinging to the tip of a tree, staring out through the mist. "I'm guessing you're heading for—"

"Yes," Leah says, and starts walking forward. This form is no less true than her usual one, but it is different. It exudes her powers in ways that her normal form keeps close and coiled.

The grass dies beneath her feet and the faint touch of her skirts. The path she leaves behind her is not a thin one, as her power billows out from her form. It is dry and grey and dead.

It is not only human lives the Death takes, and Leah is as Hela was, and is willing to take any to come to her. Jashin still takes the lion's share, but Leah has hers to collect. Vegetation dies instantaneously at her touch. Humans take the longest. Everything else… depends. On sapience, on sentience, on complexity of form.

Everything depends.

 _Death is cold_.

The water freezes beneath her heels as she reaches the river, smooth and rigid, locked to the bank until she's gone for long enough to melt again.

The mist hides her until she is within a few hundred meters of the village. It is not a massacre, not quite, but the plague that has taken hold of this community is close enough for Jashin to bow out and let her take whomever she can find.

Yahiko ghosts along nearby, darting forward and back and around on the surface of the water itself, while she takes slow, deliberate steps befitting of a queen.

There is shouting as someone on the shore sees them. Yahiko is usually invisible, but at her side, when she lets her power out like this, he is… translucent. She is more solid, at least to the eyes.

A fishing spear goes through her shoulder, in one side and out the other. There is not a scratch left behind, just a slight flutter in the fabric of her sleeve as the air is disturbed.

She does not halt in her approach, just tilts her head a little, inviting them to try again.

"Can they hear us?" Yahiko asks, coming closer for just a moment.

"When you speak, they hear but murmurs, indecipherable but nonetheless unnerving," Leah answers. "Stay behind, for now. You are a retainer, not a guard."

"As you wish…" Yahiko mutters, just a little petulant.

There are more spears, and Leah ignores them even as she reaches the shore.

"A shinobi?" One of the villagers demands; he is healthy and strong, and will survive the plague. She ignores him. "One of those damned illusions? What the hell are you doing here?"

Leah pauses in her walk, turns her head towards him, and tilts it just a little.

 ** _"I am not a shinobi_** **,** " she says, letting them know and understand. **_"I am more_**."

She turns away and heads further into the village. Someone tries to grab her by the arm, and cries out and stumbles when there is nothing there to catch. His passage leaves billows of black smoke pouring from the place he'd touched, but little else.

"The grass!" One man chokes out, scrambling back and pulling other with him. _"Look at the grass!_ "

There is a panic, of course. More threats. Yahiko laughs wryly, amused as only a shinobi can be.

A bird comes down and attempts to land on Leah's shoulder. It passes through and falls dead to the ground.

"What the hell _are_ you?" One of the men demands again.

She decides to steal a monologue from the woman she might have become. Could have become. Would have and would not have become, had she been her own original.

Hela's monologue.

" ** _Why do the living so fear my touch?"_** She asks, not stopping in her walk. She gestures towards a house that has someone only seconds from expiring, and Yahiko darts in the direction she indicates. A broken wail of grief comes only seconds later, and Yahiko returns.

" ** _Do I not bring peace to those who long have borne life's burden?_** " She asks, aware that people are following her with useless weapons at the ready. " ** _Do I not bring rest at the end of life's weary journey?_** "

"What the hell…" Faces are pale. Fear is evident. All is as it should be.

" ** _Do I not banish pain from all who may suffer?_** " She lets her voice get quieter at that, gesturing at another house. This death happened before they arrived, but is recent enough for the child's soul to still be near. " ** _Do I not cure all ills—and put an end to all wounds?_** "

"What _are_ you?" Someone demands again, stepping into her path and shoving the point of a fishing spear beneath her chin.

She eyes him coolly, eyes glowing just a little brighter. " ** _Is it not obvious? I am Leah of Hel, Queen of the Dead. I am here to collect those that are mine. If you do not wish to become one of them, you'd best move out of the way. My power is not always a discerning one."_**

The man stumbles back with a shriek, and Leah smiles.

 ** _"Good choice."_**

"I'm done," Yahiko says, jumping to a position behind and to the side of her. "I ran through the remaining houses and grabbed the lingering souls, took out a few that were about to die and just ended the suffering a little early. We good to go?"

Leah reaches out into thin air and makes a grasping motion, as though pulling all those souls to her, and then slams her magic forcefully into the ground, burning her symbol into the ground.

She smiles wider.

 ** _"Do not fear death, little mortals. She comes for everyone, but we who collect you when she has done her part are fair rulers."_**

"For the most part," Yahiko mutters under his breath.

She disappears in a wisp of smoke, pulling Yahiko along with her.

"To the next location," she says, and starts for it, Yahiko behind her.

It may take time, but her legend will thrive eventually, in one form or another.

o.o.o.o.o

 **A/N:** **The monologue referenced can be found here: phoenixyfriend dot tumblr dot com slash post slash 158558087805**

 **Leah's symbol is a triangular (thin isosceles pointing downwards) knot with a gem held in the bottom-most space (stylized as a dark circle when she burns it into the ground) that I based off of a necklace I got at a Ren Faire because knots are pretty big in both Norse and Celtic cultures, and the symbol seemed like the sort of thing that Leah would use to differentiate herself from her predecessors.**

 **I really wish I could draw well enough to do Leah like this. BTW the horns are either impala or addax, but I couldn't decide which.**

o.o.o.o.o

 ** _Next time:_** _Time for some PR._


	23. The Babysitter from Hel

"So," Mikoto says, and then doesn't continue.

"So."

Mikoto gives her a dry, dirty look. "You know I wouldn't be asking if it weren't my only option."

"I feel like I'm being insulted," Leah drawls. "Are you insulting me, Mikoto?"

"You are one of my best friends, for reasons I cannot fathom, but I'm sure you can understand why I'm wary of leaving either of my children in your care."

"Especially Saskue?"

"Especially Sasuke."

Leah shrugs. "Most people would be."

"However," Mikoto sighs, "he was rather insistent that he spend time with his 'Leah-nee-chan,' so I suppose that, on this occasion, it's acceptable."

"Because you're also leaving Itachi here."

"…well, yes." Mikoto gives her a Look. "I trust him to make sure your…"

"My bullshit?"

"…you peculiar life doesn't cause trouble," Mikoto says carefully, delicately, like she knows Leah won't take offense but wants to hold the high ground in terms of politeness anyway. "However, he's exhausted from a recent mission, which is why I'm not asking him to do this himself."

"And Sasuke asked for me."

"And, yes, Sasuke asked for you."

Leah smiles.

o.o.o.o.o

"—and so the children found that things in Avalon were not as they'd thought, that the Manchester Gods were more benign than the King had said, but there was a darker secret beneath Master Wilson's powered machines."

Sasuke sits on the floor, hugging his knees and watching Leah with wide eyes. "What was it?"

"The children found that the machines of the Manchester Gods were being powered by an ancient, evil entity, a fire demon by the name of Surtur, whom the magpie boy had previously offended, with the handmaiden's help." Leah tilts her head and pretends to think, but she can feel a rip in space behind her. "I don't suppose I can get some help telling the story?"

"Parts of it are fuzzy, but I'm sure I can remember enough," Loki says, plopping down on a seat next to her with a grin. He waves at Sasuke. "Hey, kid. It's been a while."

Sasuke waves back. "You're Leah-nee-chan's friend?"

"Mm… half-sibling, maybe?" Loki makes a face and turns to Leah, who shrugs. "You know what, sure, let's just go with friend. Our familial connections are too complicated to make sense of."

Sasuke frowns, but seems to accept that. "Can you finish the story?"

"Has she mentioned Ikol yet?" Loki asks, sneaking a glance at Leah, who only rolls her eyes. When Sasuke nods his head, Loki laughs. "Okay, then. Hopefully I can keep telling the story the way she's been doing it."

They manage to finish the story, weaving a tale of magic and tragedy, dead girls and living stories and a bird that acted as the man behind the curtain. They tell the story of the children that they never quite were, but that paved the way for their own creation.

By the time the story is over, Leah decides that it's time for Sasuke to go to bed, and sends him off to shower.

"Why are you here, Loki?"

"It's ending."

Leah considers that, lounging back on the couch. "Latverion?"

"Yes. The stories will be starting again soon."

"It's been eight years, hasn't it?"

"And they won't remember a second of it," Loki sighs. "I mean, some might. Doom probably will. But overall…"

"Just the most powerful and anyone capable of breaking the wall?" Leah asks.

"Basically." Loki fidgets for a moment. "I… there's a version of you there. Not child Leah, not Hela, but somewhere in between and more like _you_ than the other two points of the story that I know. She won't fit into our world when it resets, not logically, but… I think all the stuff with the timelines resetting may let her exist despite the paradox. I'm expecting her to survive."

"…a sister." Leah has to think the idea over. "You're bringing it up because you think I might want to meet her?"

"Do you?"

"Absolutely."

Loki smiles. "And there are… hints, I guess? There are hints, in the world, that imply her story is going to meet up with Sera and Angela's, so they might… I don't know. I don't know where it's going, yet."

"All we can do is wait, now."

"…yeah."

o.o.o.o.o

"Leah," Mikoto asks, once she comes home, an odd look on her face. "Where did you say you came from?"

"Hel," she answers, and waits.

Mikoto nods, but doesn't say any more.

"You're suspicious of something," Leah says, none too delicate.

"Haven't I always been?" Mikoto says dryly. "Our friendship _started_ because I was suspicious of you, and your refusal to answer certain questions, especially considering what Kakashi claims he went through a few months ago… you haven't done much to make that suspicion _dim_."

Leah shrugs. "C'est la vie, mon ami."

"I have no idea what that means." Mikoto's flat expression is almost funny.

"That's life, my friend," Leah translates. "I have my reasons. You know that."

"There are rumors," Mikoto says, dropping all pretense. "Of someone using your name and title, claiming to be a shinigami, showing up either to scenes of recent or soon-to-be mass deaths and then disappearing almost immediately. A similar aesthetic to yours, though the face can't be scene, and impervious to harm."

"How curious."

" _Leah_."

She sighs, wondering how to spin this. "Your gods and mine are not the same, Mikoto. And I am just as likely to be named after the gods of my culture as you are to be named after yours, she who takes her name from Susanoo-no-Mikoto."

Mikoto's lips purse thinly. "You're saying that this person is an actual death goddess."

"Or taking inspiration from such."

"And how do I know it isn't just you?"

" _Just_ me? I feel like I should be insulted."

"Leah, please. Please just give me a way to be sure that you're not the one doing this. That I don't have to tell Hokage-sama that he needs to try to arrest you for the deaths of hundreds of Fire Country civilians."

"I don't have an alibi, Mikoto. No matter what I say, I cannot prove my innocence." She shrugs. "And you could not hold me if you tried."

Mikoto inhales sharply. "Did you kill those people, Leah?"

"No. I can truthfully say that I did not." Just collected their souls in the aftermath. "I can't prove my innocence, though."

"…I hate you."

"You don't."

"It would be easier if I did."

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:** Leah doesn't like the fate lines that she sees._


	24. Crucial Jenga Block

Rin drops her pen.

It's a subtle reaction, considering what it could have been, but it is most certainly a reaction. Leah catches her eye.

"That's—"

Leah hisses out a breath. "It is."

"Leah…"

"I'm going to go see what's going on."

She takes long steps through the halls, leather heels not quite clacking on the ground, but with enough power in her form that everyone drops out of her path save for Kushina. The woman takes up a position behind her shoulder, silent and dark eyed, a demonic weasel of some sort slung around her shoulders. They head for the suicide arrival halls, ignoring everything on their way. Hizashi watches as they pass by his office, and Yahiko catches Kushina's eye for a moment as he flits past, on his way to attend to some duty or other.

Leah's not sure if she likes what she sees.

Her eyes are accustomed to searching out fate lines and stories, nowadays. It's second nature to check if a person is going to be important or not. And right now, there's someone very, very important that died but minutes ago in the suicide halls. It's like Rin and Kushina and Yahiko all over again, a death that's going to lead to great or terrible things.

Leah doesn't like the fate lines that she sees, because right now, this death is tending towards 'terrible.' It's tending towards Rin and Yahiko's death, and is once again tied up in those blasted eyes.

"Leah?" Kushina tries.

"Not now," she grumbles.

Leah doesn't like the fate lines she sees, because this is… this is a crucial block at the bottom of a Jenga tower of a soul. Whatever tower he's been holding up, it's only one small jolt from toppling down in pieces.

Leah doesn't like the fate lines that she sees, because she knows them.

The doors slam open to greet her, and she stares down an eyeless, bleeding face, still bloated with the signs of death in a river.

Kushina inhales sharply behind her.

Leah's eyes narrow, face otherwise remaining stolen, even though she knows that the man can't see her. He hasn't healed from his death yet.

"Shisui, what the hel are you doing in Hel?"

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next time:**_ Mine, Leah thinks.


	25. Uchiha Complex

"It won't work," Leah says, invisible and standing atop the highest point in the Uchiha district. It's Mikoto's roof.

Shisui clings to the roof behind her, and Yahiko is standing on solid air a few feet away. Kushina's down closer to the gutter, her gaze on the village she hasn't visited in years. Her eyes are fixed on a point in the distance that the rest of them can't see; there is no idealistic mother's instinct that will let her find Naruto from here, but she was the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki for most of her life, and has been the Head Demon Handler since she died. She can find the bijuu anywhere, and that keeps her focused on her son.

A portal opens up behind them, and Rin steps out with a clipboard in hand. "I have the files you asked for."

Leah takes them and flips through, lips pursed. She hasn't been here for long enough. If she had been, she might have had more people to reference, but a decade and change simply isn't enough to have a holistic view based solely on the souls she's collected.

She looks up and traces through the horrid tangle of fate strings that have grown over the past year or two, all collecting on Itachi in the end, and then stretching out towards the northwest in a woven tangle.

"Shisui. Everything you know about the current situation with the Uchiha. Now."

He's silent for a long moment, and then Kushina says, "Listen to her, kid. You're dead. As far as anyone's concerned, Leah's the highest authority in your existence unless Death herself shows up. No Hokage, no clan head, nothing. She's Queen of the Dead."

"…I don't… the clan is planning a coup," Shisui finally says. "I was hoping that… listen, Danzo stole one of my eyes, so I gave the other one to Itachi and told him to brainwash the elders into dropping the coup, but if he hasn't…"

"He's thirteen," Leah snaps. "Prodigy of a shinobi or not, he's not an adult, and he's too traumatized to be mentally healthy. Logic isn't going to be his forte, especially if there are as many adults trying to manipulate him as there seem to be."

"But… he's Itachi," Shisui says, like that should explain everything.

"He's still a kid," Yahiko retorts, though far more gently than Leah did. "One who's gone through enough mental trauma to be very, very open to the manipulations of someone like Danzo."

"And what do you know about Danzo?" Shisui demanded.

"I mean, he's the reason I'm dead," Yahiko says lightly. "Held a friend of mine hostage and told me that if I didn't let my other friend kill me, he'd kill her. So yeah, I know what he's like."

"…shit."

"Yep!" There was a noise like Yahiko had jumped back and slung an arm around Shisui's shoulders. "Chill out, kid! You're dead now, so you've got us."

"Uh… the only ones I really know are Kushina-san and, ah, Leah…sama?"

Leah nods, near imperceptibly.

"Right. Leah-sama. That's going to take some getting used to."

Leah's eyes narrow as Mikoto comes into sight, Sasuke clinging to her arm. It's been a few days since Shisui's funeral, and Sasuke is young enough to have already recovered. Neither of the two notice the ghosts and goddess that have taken up a residence on their roof.

Leah steps forward and drops to the ground just as they reach their house. She watches them pass, no emotion on her face, and then steps up behind Mikoto as the woman searches for her keys.

A sigil builds at the tips of her fingers, and Mikoto whirls around, Sharingan blazing and a kunai in her free hand.

Mikoto cannot see her. None of the living can, not right now, save perhaps Nagato.

(Leah has no love for the doujutsu of the hidden continent.)

"Kaa-chan? Is something wrong?"

Mikoto stays motionless for a few long moments, and then forces herself to relax. The kunai disappears, and she turns to smile down at Sasuke.

"Nothing's wrong. Kaa-chan's just a little on-edge today."

"Because of Shisui?" Sasuke asked.

Mikoto didn't let any crack in her façade show. "No, but I've been a shinobi for a very long time. Sometimes things feel dangerous even when they aren't."

"…that's that false positive thing, right?"

"Yes, Sasuke, it is."

Leah steps forward when Mikoto turns away and presses the sigil to the nape of her neck. It burns, to Leah's eyes, bright and unmistakable, but none will see it unless they are more-than-human themselves, or have somehow gained the favor of a god.

Mine, Leah thinks, eyes narrowing. Mikoto's a good friend, and no matter how she dies, Leah will ensure that she ends up in Hel.

Mikoto's death is coming, so soon that Leah can practically taste it, and Leah can't wait.

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next Time:**_

 _Oh no... Mikoto's dead... what a tragedy..._

 _Leah's TOTALLY grieving, right?_


	26. Massacre

Leah falls forward against her desk, choking.

"Leah-sama?" Rin asks, sounding more than a little worried.

The pressure is too much. Something is _wrong_ , broken and torn and shaking the universe to its foundations, but Leah's the only one here that can _feel_ it.

She flares her power, pushing away anything and everything until she's got the pulsing eldritch wrongness held at bay.

"…Leah-sama?" Rin hesitantly tries again.

Leah takes a deep breath. "I'm fine."

"What happened?"

"I don't know yet," Leah says, getting to her feet and walking around the desk. "But I'm about to fi—"

The first soul drops into the massacre halls, screaming rage and betrayals.

Rin's head snaps to the side. She breathes out a single word. "Uchiha."

"…souls first," Leah says, setting off. "And then we'll see."

o.o.o.o.o

Leah feels the bottleneck before she even reaches the halls, and sends a bundle of magic in the shape of a magpie to hunt down Yahiko and bring him to her. The walls of her domain pulse with green light in patterns that look as though they're reflected off of water, even in the driest areas. Rin steps along behind her, three paces behind and with a pen racing across the papers on her clipboard.

The doors slam open as Leah steps forward, her arms crossed over her chest as she surveys the souls that are appearing in her domain. They're freshly dead, still covered in blood, still screaming or sobbing and too out of it to even recognize her. She closes her eyes and pushes away at the pressure that's building into another wave, already knowing that she's going to have a migraine. Someone needs to corral and control these souls while she checks on the bottleneck and the mysterious breakage.

"Get Shisui," Leah says. "And Kushina. Yahiko and his subordinates will come to the living world with me."

"Yes, ma'am," Rin answers with a sharp nod. "And the… thing from earlier?"

"We'll see."

o.o.o.o.o

Leah and Yahiko step through an acid-green portal into a literal massacre.

"Oh, that's gross," he says, making a face at the smell in the air. "You sure we need to be here?"

"Bottleneck," Leah reminds him. "Too much, too fast, too localized. Start working the edges inward. Whoever did this isn't done yet."

Yahiko hesitates. "You think it's that Itachi kid?"

Leah nods, and he vanishes. On feet too silent to be real, she walks towards Mikoto's house. Death surrounds her, and though she's apprehensive of the pressure that still pushes at her very being and the fabric of reality, a smile grows.

A twist of magic brings her formal wear to the forefront, the light fabrics swishing about her feet. The humans cannot see her, but the dead souls, still stumbling about near their bodies, recoil as she passes them by. They don't know who she is, not really, but something in them recognizes her power, or simply the reputation she has cultivated.

One dead shinobi tries to attack her. He is weak and slow with the fatigue brought on by how recent his death is, but he still tries. She tilts her head and looks at him, once he's realized how bad of an idea this is, with his throat held tight by her fingers. She does not feel the cold, but no doubt he feels a certain terror from the chill of her hand on top of everything else.

"Have you a name?"

He chokes and flails, tugging weakly at her hand, though she doesn't know whether he's trying to answer or just that desperate to take a breath he no longer needs. She drops him and waits.

"You _bitch._ "

"Your name, human."

He looks up at her with murder in his eyes, and Leah smiles. Wisps of green pass from her fingertips, and in seconds the man is chained to the ground, blocky light around his wrists, like that one comic the child Loki had laughed at.

(Green Lantern? Something like that.)

"What are you?" He demands.

"The Goddess of Death."

She turns and continues towards the main house, thinking. She's made plans, plenty of them, but had committed to nothing until today.

"Yahiko! To me!"

He's by her side in an instant, legs fusing into a ghostly tail that trails behind him as he floats along. "Orders?"

"Stay by my side," she says. "We wait for Konoha."

"No reaping until later, got it. Can I ask why?"

"They've been questioning my public form's intentions. I choose to introduce them to the goddess instead."

"So you want them to see the collection. You know, if you show up too early to the main house, they might try to pin it on you," Yahiko warns.

Leah pauses at that, head tilting. "I'd considered that. You have a suggestion?"

He smiles brightly at her, though she cannot see the eyes behind his uniform. "How dramatic are you willing to be?"

o.o.o.o.o

She watches Mikoto die, and while part of her feels pity for the circumstances, the rest of her is satisfied.

Mikoto is dead, and Mikoto is _hers._

o.o.o.o.o

Leah ignores the latest shuddering pressure as she waits atop the Hokage monument.

Far below, Yahiko's energy flares, and Leah prepares her response.

Her power _flares_.

It's a sense of dread that settles over Konoha, something that has people stopping in their tracks and rushing for their windows to see what it is. It's a colder power than the Kyuubi, more impersonal and distant, the kind of fear that one feels around an uncaring ruler known to behead on a whim, rather than the terror around a raging beast.

It's the fear of a death god.

Grey fog drifts from Leah's form as she phases her image to something the humans can see, and she raises one arm ahead of her. Her energy rushes across the ground, finding what she needs, and—

Bones.

Animal, mostly, since she refuses to disturb true graves, but still bones.

Nobody can see her expression from this distance, but she keeps her face impassive as she moves. The bones float up to collect beneath her, forming a dirt-stained stairway towards the Uchiha Estate.

Every step she takes is accompanied by the bones behind flying apart and reassembling a new step further below, and there is nothing to hold the structure up. The distance is enough that she forces the stairs to move closer on their own, more like walking down a moving escalator than a normal staircase. The drama would die down if she were to actually walk that distance.

Also, she's impatient, so there's that.

The bones only have a structure to seemingly support the staircase once she reaches the ground itself, fog abundant, and she keeps on hand on the railing as she stop just steps from earth once more. She tilts her head, ignoring the swords at her neck, and surveys the compound.

There is but one Uchiha left alive within its walls.

Leah meets the Hokage's eyes, sees fear and suspicion and maybe a little hate, and she smiles. Her power flares again, and the waking dead, not yet moved on, come into view for the humans as well.

The dead do scream so sweetly.

The shinobi try to break the genjutsu they think themselves caught in, try to damage _her_ , but all for naught. Leah steps past them, steps _through_ them, and heads for the nearest soul.

A press of her forefinger to the dead woman's forehead has her dissolving to nothingness.

" ** _To me, my reapers_** ," Leah calls out, and Yahiko's made good on his word. A team of four drops down to meet her, and it's little effort to make them visible too. " ** _Collection time._** "

"Who are you?" One of the shinobi asks, and Leah pauses in her strides, turns just barely to glance over her shoulder, and smiles. Her lips are painted a glossy red so dark that it is nearly black, and she's sure the sight is striking in its own way, especially given the fog that's floating about.

" ** _I am the Queen of Helheim,_** " Leah says. " ** _I am the Goddess of Death._** "

"A Shinigami?" One of the shinobi demands.

Leah laughs. " ** _He is his own story. I am mine. Shinigami-dono is a… coworker, shall we say. Our roles complement each other._** "

Leah walks towards the main house. Sasuke is as yet undisturbed, which is… good. It's good for her. It means she'll be the first to reach him.

"Hokage-sama, the grass…"

Leah smiles to herself as she walks, her reapers collecting soul after soul around her. The grass dies beneath her feet, and the koi in the pond she passes over do the same, but the shinobi do not try to touch her directly. They felt the cold when she passed through them the first time. They already know it would be fruitless.

"What do you _want?_ " Sarutobi asks.

" ** _To do my job,_** **Professor,** " Leah retorts, laughing at the way his face twists. " ** _We of Death have a sense of humor too, little mortal. God or not, dead or alive, a little comedy is good for the soul._** "

One of the shinobi sends a spray of shuriken through her. She ignores them.

It seems to be a cue for the others. Little by little, they do their best to kill her, likely on some silent, secret order from Sarutobi, and Leah ignores them. Only the genjutsu touch her, and that is but momentary.

Leah eyes the woman, using it as an excuse to pause so the shinobi do not see her steps falter as something far away shatters and forces her head to scream at the pressure. It is not pain, but it is not comfort, either.

" ** _Kurenai, yes? Hm. You'll be one to keep an eye on, I imagine…_** " Leah muses, and watches Kurenai with a steadiness that hides her inner apprehension until she feels steady enough to walk again.

She puts up a force field behind herself, just enough to stop the weapons, and smirks to herself when cries of alarm reach her ears as they hit it. It wouldn't do for one to go wide and hit Sasuke, after all. She still needs to see where his fate leads.

Leah approaches Mikoto and Fugaku's souls, watching as dread recognition reaches Mikoto's eyes. The woman was always too perceptive for her own good. Leah smiles.

" ** _I'll be seeing you and yours in Helheim,_** " she says, and forces the word through All-Speak. They will understand where they are going, hear the word as it is but _know_ it for what it is, and so will all the shinobi behind her.

A kusarigama swipes through their necks, and they fade from sight, dispersing like ash on the wind.

Leah ignores the corpses on the ground, and turns, mindful of her living audience. They yell at her, asking what she means to do as she turns Sasuke so that the back of his neck faces them. She brings two fingers to her face and presses them to her own lips, and when she withdraws them, a ghostly sigil floats above them, faintly gold with a green spark at its center.

She presses the sigil to Sasuke's nape, and forces more power into it than she has thus far. She will not _turn_ Sasuke's story, but she will give him tools to make the journey as interesting as possible.

It burns into his neck, thankfully painless in his state of unconsciousness. There's no sign of it to human eyes after a few scant seconds, but Leah can see where it glows beneath the skin, the magic burrowing into him and giving him tendrils of her own power. It's bare drops from an ocean, but it will be _something_.

" ** _The child's story is not yet over,_** " Leah says, standing up and turning to the shinobi. " ** _He is not dead, but once he is… his soul is_** **mine** ** _._** "

She waits for their faces to drain of blood and color, and then lets her mouth widen into a Cheshire grin. " ** _Take care of him, will you? There's not many that earn my favor, and I'd hate to think I bestowed one my first gifts to a mortal on someone who'll die before they can use it._** "

Leah turns and the bones from before fly in through an open window and construct the opening to a tunnel that would lead into the ground if the floor weren't in the way. They are only there to provide an illusion of structure, though, as all Leah needs is a way to disguise the fact that her portals as a goddess and her portals as a strange but supposedly human woman are the same. The portal is magic, and the reapers flit through before she follows.

She flashes another grin over her shoulder before she walks through, the magical force field finally fizzing out behind her.

She comes home to chaos.

o.o.o.o.o

Ragged and travel-worn, clothing in tatters and leaking smoke as signs of the horrors he witnessed that have reverberated out far enough to force parts of her own Helheim to ruins, Patri-not tells her, as only an old friend can.

 **"L͇̺͔̟͉̩ͪ̌ͨ͊́́̀a̜̫͚͔̜ͣ̓̑̌t̡͓̳͈̔͑͑̌̋v̷̥̱̞͉̦͙ͤͦͯ̏̐̚e̡̛̪͖͒r̩̜̦̖͉̤͇̉͂ͩ̋i̓̿̐̏͊̃ͧ͗́oͯ̐͛ͧ͢͏͉̘̬n̶̖̬͚̱͙̩̙̱͙ͮ̿́ ̦̫͇̖́ͭ̇̈͛ͩͦ͘í̸̩̼̘̲̝̯͌̀̉͆͆͗͑͟s̵̴̰͙̩̮̲̼̻͈͑͛̎̓̂͗͞ ̷͓̳̘ͮ̅̄ͬ̆̈́̓d̞̻̱ͫ̒ͥ͡e̯͇͉͒ͣ̃̑͋̒ͯͩ͞a̯͍̭̪̜̅͒̏͌̋ͤ̅͡ͅḋ̵͔͇͓̟̱̣̪̩̲̇͗̾̕.̵̵̦̗̯̟͕͚̲ͯ̏̋̄̏̎͞"**

o.o.o.o.o

 _ **Next time:** Rin gets some very pertinent need-to-know information._


End file.
